Authentication prompts in System Settings trigger not-responding dialogs

[o-alquimista]

What Happened?

Whenever some section of System Settings requires authentication and spawns a password prompt, I get the "app not responding" dialog, even though the app seems to be running fine. If I dismiss it by pressing "Wait", I can continue typing the password, but it comes back after a few seconds. It only stops when I close the authentication prompt.

2025-11-03.23-33-26.mp4

It also happens in other sections of System Settings, such as User Accounts.

I'm attaching the log output below, collected by running G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all io.elementary.settings and reproducing the problem.

elementary-settings.log

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open System Settings, navigate to Security & Privacy, and go to the Firewall tab.
2. Press the Unlock button at the bottom. A password prompt will appear.
3. Wait a few seconds. The "app not responding" dialog should pop up then.

Expected Behavior

If I finish typing my password, the authentication succeeds and everything works as expected. Clearly, the "app not responding" message should not be there.

OS Version

8.x (Circe)

OS Architecture

amd64 (on most hardwares)

Session Type

Secure Session (Wayland)

Software Version

Latest release (I have run all updates)

Log Output

Hardware Info

No response

[ryonakano]

IIRC this is because we're requesting authorization in sync, not async. Possibly already reported in some of the plug repositories.

[o-alquimista]

I was reading this issue yesterday. Is that it?

Danielle said:

Fixed for Power. We had to make everything async. Transferring to locale for triage. We'll need to make sure any time we call for permission we use async methods

[ryonakano]

Regarding to Security & Privacy Plug, we fixed the issue in elementary/settings-security-privacy#185 but it's not yet released. We're working on releasing it in elementary/settings-security-privacy#193 so it should be pulled to Stable channel soon.

Here are components that we still need to apply the same fix:

• Initial Setup
• Parental Controls Plug
• User Accounts Plug
• Settings Plug
• Network Indicator

https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aelementary%20Polkit.Permission.sync&type=code