---
name: "polkitd"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "polkit"
version: "128-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://carta.tech/man/polkitd"
---

# polkitd(8)

The polkit system daemon

## NAME

polkitd - The polkit system daemon

## SYNOPSIS

**polkitd**

## DESCRIPTION

**polkitd** provides the *org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1* D-Bus service on the system message bus. Users or administrators should never need to start this daemon as it will be automatically started by [**dbus-daemon**(1)](/man/dbus-daemon/1.md) or [**systemd**(1)](/man/systemd/1.md) whenever an application calls into the service.

**polkitd** may be configured via the [**polkitd.conf**(5)](/man/polkitd.conf/5.md) configuration file.

**polkitd** can be started as the *polkitd* system user directly, or alternatively it can be started with superuser privileges in which case it will drop privileges early by switching to that same system user.

See the [**polkit**(8)](/man/polkit/8.md) man page for more information.

## AUTHOR

Written by David Zeuthen \<davidz@redhat.com\> with a lot of help from many others.

## BUGS

Please send bug reports to either the distribution or the polkit-devel mailing list, see **https://github.com/polkit-org/polkit#bugs-and-development**.

## SEE ALSO

[**polkit**(8)](/man/polkit/8.md), [**pkaction**(1)](/man/pkaction/1.md), [**pkcheck**(1)](/man/pkcheck/1.md), [**pkexec**(1)](/man/pkexec/1.md), [**pkttyagent**(1)](/man/pkttyagent/1.md), [**dbus-daemon**(1)](/man/dbus-daemon/1.md), [**systemd**(1)](/man/systemd/1.md)