Hello World,
Today, we will again speak about the possibility of customizing the login screen of an Ubuntu computer.
In our previous post, we have described how to use our little utility script in order to customize the login screen page. Using the Change-GDM-background script version 3.7, it is possible to customize the Ubuntu login screen. The script can be used to either change the background color of the screen or to display a picture.
We really like our little script and it can achieve the expected results. However, as we are using more and more Ubuntu (or Debian based) distribution, we have found other ways to perform the same configuration changes.
So, let’s proceed !
Overview
So far, in order to customize look’n feel of the Ubuntu Login screen, we have been using our small script called Change-GDM-Background. The script provides a small GUI interface that can help users to set either solid color background or picture on the Ubuntu login Screen as shown in the screenshot below.
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Credits : The picture used in the login screen by Sketchepedia on Freepik
Using dconf profile approach
In this approach, we do not need to run any script. We simply need to create some additional configuration files and save the changes in the dconf database. This approach is quite straightforward and can be used against Ubuntu 20.04 and later. You do not need anything else.
Step 1 – Create the dconf profile file
In this step, you will first need to create a file called gdm under /etc/dconf/profile. To create this file, open a Terminal console and type the following command
sudo nano /etc/dconf/profile/gdm
This file needs to contains the following information
user-db:user system-db:gdm system-db:machine
Save the file.
Step 2 – Create the setting file to be used by dconf software
The next step is to create another file that will host the settings that you want to implement on your system. To create this file, open the Terminal console and issue the following command
sudo mkdir /etc/dconf/db/gdm.d sudo nano /etc/dconf/db/gdm.d/10-customization-screen
In this file, copy the content below and save it if you want to set a picture in the login screen (replace the path with your own path)
[com/ubuntu/login-screen]
background-picture-uri='file:///usr/share/backgrounds/<%yourFileName%>.jpg'
background-size='cover'
background-repeat='no-repeat'
In this file, copy the content below and save it if you want to change the background color of the login screen (this code example will set a red background color)
[com/ubuntu/login-screen] background-color='#cf2f2f'
Step 3 – Apply the changes on the system
Finally, we will need to apply these settings against the system. This step is also quite straight forward. You simply open a Terminal console and you issue the following command line
sudo dconf update
If all is fine, you can logoff and you should see that the login screen has been changed accordingly.
Final Notes
As you can see this approach is quite straight forward and you can customize your Ubuntu login screen rather quickly. Using this approach you can also perform some additional customization such as remove or change the logo in the login screen. To see all the settings you can change, you can use the dconf-editor GUI. You will need to install it first by issuing the following command
sudo apt-get install dconf-editor
Then to use the utility, simply type from a Terminal console dconf-editor. If you browse to com/ubuntu/login-screen, you can see the settings you can modify
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if you go to /org/gnome/login-screen, you can see also a list of other settings that can be modified through the dconf file.
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This approach is working great and it’s really simple enough to implement. However, there is one little issue when using this approach with Ubuntu 24.04. The Theme in Ubuntu 24.04 is using dark background for the user list. When you change the login background, you might end up with something that does not look consistent. It will really depends on the picture you would be using (or the solid color)
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Using this picture with light tones, make the look n feel a little bit less consistent.
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Using this approach, there is no way (as far as we know) to change this behavior. However, if you use the Change-GDM-Script version 3.7 against Ubuntu 24.04, the script will try to use lighter colors and the background color should be smoother
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This is it for this post !
Till next time
See ya