Ubuntu gsettings (dconf)

Install dconf Editor (GUI for managing dconf settings)

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor

See a particular setting

gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Lenses remote-content-search
gsettings get org.gnome.DejaDup full-backup-period

Change a particular setting

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses remote-content-search 'none'
gsettings set org.gnome.DejaDup full-backup-period 180

Reset a particular setting to the default value

gsettings reset com.canonical.Unity.Lenses remote-content-search 'none'
gsettings reset org.gnome.DejaDup full-backup-period 180

Recursively list all keys and values

gsettings list-recursively | sort

This is particularly useful when figuring out which key is used for a setting, e.g.

  1. Dump the list of keys/values before the change

    gsettings list-recursively | sort > before

  2. Make the change

  3. Dump the list of keys/values after the change

    gsettings list-recursively | sort > after

  4. Diff to see which key was changed

    diff before after

Search for a particular schema

gsettings list-schemas | egrep -i "deja|duplicity"

Search for a particular key (setting)

gsettings list-recursively | grep -i deja | sort -V

Recursively list all keys (settings) and values for a particular schema

gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.DejaDup | sort -V

List just the keys (settings) for a particular schema

gsettings list-keys org.gnome.DejaDup

List the children for a particular schema

gsettings list-children org.gnome.DejaDup

Get dconf settings from backed up dconf file

XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/path/to/home/.config dconf dump /

For this task, dconf is better than gsettings because gsettings will use the schema for the current version of Ubuntu, so some of the settings won’t be accurate if they’re being read from a different Ubuntu installation