How to disable systemd-resolved in Ubuntu

README.md

How to disable systemd-resolved in Ubuntu

Stages

• Disable and stop the systemd-resolved service:

    sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved.service
    sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved
  

• Then put the following line in the [main] section of your /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf:

    dns=default
  

• Delete the symlink /etc/resolv.conf

    rm /etc/resolv.conf
  

• Restart network-manager

    sudo service network-manager restart
    or
    sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager.service
  

Sources

• https://askubuntu.com/questions/907246/how-to-disable-systemd-resolved-in-ubuntu

Why not just rename instead of remove?

mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.del

@euntae: With just stopping instead of also disabling systemd-resolved it will be active again after a reboot but the way you described it the entries in resolv.conf won't get used anyway at least on Ubuntu 24.

I was going crazy with this on the steam deck. NetworkManager kept creating a resolv.conf always pointing to 127.0.0.53.
Until I found that SteamOS (arch in disguise) had created a /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/dns with a
[main]
dns=systemd-resolved
And that was being used instead of my conf file with dns=default...