How to add the Guest Session feature in Ubuntu desktop

Your privacy is important and nearly every Linux distribution is filled with features, tricks, and underpinnings that take the security of your information very seriously. Take, for instance, the idea of the guest session. 

Imagine you had a special login for your operating system that would allow others to use the machine, without having access to any of your data. At the same time, no information would be saved between guest sessions. In other words, anyone could use your computer, and — once they log out of the guest session — any and all data they collected during the session would be automatically trashed.

Also: Ubuntu 22.04.2 is as predictable as an operating system can be… and that's a good thing 

That's why the guest session should be considered important to anyone who randomly (or regularly) has to share a computer with other users. This could even be employed by small businesses that need kiosk-like computers for customers to use.

Although Ubuntu doesn't ship with this feature enabled by default, it's pretty easy to add. Let me show you how to do just that.

How to enable Guest Session

Requirements

The only things you'll need for this are a running instance of Ubuntu desktop (from 16.04 to the latest release) and a user with sudo privileges. That's all you need. Let's make it happen.

sudo apt-get install lightdm -y

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/40-enable-guest.conf

In that file, paste the following contents:

[Seat:*]
allow-guest=true

Save the file with the [Ctrl]+[X] keyboard combination.

The Guest Session will look and feel like a regular session and even has a home directory. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that every single time you enter the Guest Session, you'll see the Temporary Guest Session warning and will have to walk through the welcome wizard.

If that becomes problematic, you can remove the initial setup tool with the command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove gnome-initial-setup

Of course, the above command must be run as a regular user with sudo privileges. However, once the command completes, log out, and log back in to the Guest Session account. You'll still see the Temporary Guest Session warning, but not the initial setup wizard.

And that, my Linux-using friends, is how you can enable the Guest Session account and retain your privacy, no matter how many people need to use your computer.