Sandbox Permissions#

One of Flatpak’s main goals is to increase the security of desktop systems by isolating applications from one another. This is achieved using sandboxing and means that, by default, applications that are run with Flatpak have extremely limited access to the host environment. This includes:

  • No access to any host files except the runtime, the app, ~/.var/app/$FLATPAK_ID, and $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/app/$FLATPAK_ID. Only the latter two being writable.

  • No access to the network.

  • No access to any device nodes (apart from /dev/null, etc).

  • No access to processes outside the sandbox.

  • Limited syscalls. For instance, apps can’t use nonstandard network socket types or ptrace other processes.

  • Limited access to the session D-Bus instance - an app can only own its own name on the bus.

  • No access to host services like X11, system D-Bus, or PulseAudio.

Most applications will need access to some of these resources in order to be useful. This is primarily done during the finishing build stage, which can be configured through the finish-args section of the manifest file (see Manifests).

Portals#

Portals have already been mentioned in Basic concepts. They are a framework for providing access to resources outside of the sandbox, including:

  • Opening files with a native file chooser dialog

  • Opening URIs

  • Printing

  • Showing notifications

  • Taking screenshots

  • Inhibiting the user session from ending, suspending, idling or getting switched away

  • Getting network status information

In many cases, portals use a system component to implicitly ask the user for permission before granting access to a particular resource. For example, in the case of opening a file, the user’s selection of a file using the file chooser dialog is interpreted as implicitly granting the application access to whatever file is chosen.

This approach enables applications to avoid having to configure blanket access to large amounts of data or services and gives users control over what their applications have access to.

Interface toolkits like GTK3 and Qt5 implement transparent support for portals, meaning that applications don’t need to do any additional work to use them (it is worth checking which portals each toolkit supports). Applications that aren’t using a toolkit with support for portals can refer to the xdg-desktop-portal API documentation for information on how to use them.

Permissions guidelines#

While application developers have control over the sandbox permissions they wish to configure, good practice is encouraged and can be enforced. For example, the Flathub hosting service places requirements on which permissions can be used, and software on the host may warn users if certain permissions are used.

The following guidelines describe which permissions can be freely used, which can be used on an as-needed basis, and which should be avoided.

Standard permissions#

The following permissions provide access to basic resources that applications commonly require, and can therefore be freely used:

  • --share=network - access the network

  • --socket=x11 - show windows using X11

  • --socket=fallback-x11 - show windows using X11, if Wayland is not available, overrides x11 socket permission. Note that you must still use --socket=wayland for wayland permission

  • --share=ipc - share IPC namespace with the host (necessary for X11)

  • --socket=wayland - show windows with Wayland

  • --device=dri - OpenGL rendering

  • --socket=pulseaudio - play sound with PulseAudio

D-Bus access#

Access to the entire bus with --socket=system-bus or --socket=session-bus should be avoided, unless the application is a development tool.

Ownership

Applications are automatically granted access to their own namespace. Ownership beyond this is typically unnecessary, although there are a small number of exceptions, such as using MPRIS to provide media controls.

Talk

Talk permissions can be freely used, although it is recommended to use the minimum required.

Filesystem access#

It is common for applications to require access to different parts of the host filesystem, and Flatpak provides a flexible set of options for this. Some examples include:

  • --filesystem=host - access normal files on the host, not including host os or system internals described below

  • --filesystem=home - access the user’s home directory

  • --filesystem=/path/path - access specific paths

  • --filesystem=xdg-download - access a specific XDG folder

As a general rule, Filesystem access should be limited as much as possible. This includes:

  • Using portals as an alternative to blanket filesystem access, wherever possible.

  • Using read-only access wherever possible, using the :ro option.

  • If some home directory access is absolutely required, using XDG directory access only.

The full list of available filesystem options can be found in the Sandbox Permissions Reference. Other filesystem access guidelines include:

  • The --persist=path option can be used to map paths from the user’s home directory into the sandbox filesystem. This makes it possible to avoid configuring access to the entire home directory, and can be useful for applications that hardcode file paths in ~/.

  • If an application uses $TMPDIR to contain lock files you may want to add a wrapper script that sets it to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/app/$FLATPAK_ID.

  • Retaining and sharing configuration with non-Flatpak installations is to be avoided.

As mentioned above the host option does not actually provide complete access to the host filesystem. The main rules are:

  • These directories are blacklisted: /lib, /lib32, /lib64, /bin, /sbin, /usr, /boot, /root, /tmp, /etc, /app, /run, /proc, /sys, /dev, /var

  • Exceptions from the blacklist: /run/media

  • These directories are mounted under /var/run/host: /etc, /usr

The reason many of the directories are blacklisted is because they already exist in the sandbox such as /usr or are not usable in the sandbox.

The home permission also has exceptions as it does not grant access to the subdirectories for other applications in ~/.var/app/.

Device access#

While not ideal, --device=all can be used to access devices like controllers or webcams.

dconf access#

As of xdg-desktop-portal 1.1.0 and glib 2.60.5 (in the runtime) you do not need direct DConf access in most cases.

As of now this glib version is included in org.freedesktop.Platform//19.08 and org.gnome.Platform//3.34 and newer.

If an application existed prior to these runtimes you can tell Flatpak (>= 1.3.4) to migrate the DConf settings on the host into the sandbox by adding --metadata=X-DConf=migrate-path=/org/example/foo/ to finish-args. The path must be similar to your app-id or it will not be allowed (case is ignored and _ and - are treated equal).

If you are targeting older runtimes or require direct DConf access for other reasons you can use these permissions:

--filesystem=xdg-run/dconf
--filesystem=~/.config/dconf:ro
--talk-name=ca.desrt.dconf
--env=DCONF_USER_CONFIG_DIR=.config/dconf

With those permissions glib will continue using dconf directly.

If you use a newer runtime where dconf is no longer built and still need it you will have to build the dconf GIO module and set --env=GIO_EXTRA_MODULES=/app/lib/gio/modules/.

gvfs access#

As of gvfs 1.48, the gvfs daemons and applications use an on-disk socket to communicate, rather than an abstract socket so that the gvfs infrastructure still works when network support is disabled in the application’s sandbox.

A number of different options need to be passed depending on the application’s use of gvfs.

--talk-name=org.gtk.vfs.* is necessary to talk to the gvfs daemons over D-Bus and list mounts using the GIO APIs.

--filesystem=xdg-run/gvfsd is necessary to use the GIO APIs to list and access non-native files using the GIO APIs, using URLs rather than FUSE paths.

--filesystem=xdg-run/gvfs is necessary to give access to the FUSE mounts non-GIO and legacy applications can use. This is what will make native files appear under /run/user/`id -u`/gvfs/.

Typical GNOME and GTK applications should use:

--talk-name=org.gtk.vfs.*
--filesystem=xdg-run/gvfsd

Typical non-GNOME and non-GTK applications should use:

--filesystem=xdg-run/gvfs

No application should be using --talk-name=org.gtk.vfs in its manifest, as there are no D-Bus services named org.gtk.vfs.