There is no simple way to change the background on your login screen in Ubuntu 20.04. The people who make Gnome are pretty insistent about this¹, it seems. If you really want to modify it, though, you'll need to build a modified focalgdm3.gresource.xml
file and force the change through.
And this is how you do it:
- In Terminal, make sure you have the
git
and libglib2.0-dev
packages installed:
sudo apt install git libglib2.0-dev
- Clone Pratap Kumar's Focal GDM3 login screen hack:
git clone https://github.com/PRATAP-KUMAR/focalgdm3.git
Note: This tool is designed for 20.04 specifically. It will not work on any other version of the system.
- Enter the
focalgdm3
directory:
cd focalgdm3
- Run the cloned script as
root
, understanding that you're running code from a GitHub repo with full permissions. You have two options:
- Set a background wallpaper:
sudo ./focalgdm3 /home/yusof/myloginbackground.jpg
Note: Be sure to use the full path. Do not use ~
.
- Set a solid background colour:
sudo ./focalgdm3 \#FFFF00
Note: You may not want to use #FFFF00
as it's bright yellow.
- Restart the computer to see the changes. Signing out is not enough to trigger GDM3 to reload the necessary
.xml
file.
If at any time you would like to return Ubuntu to the stock background, you can reset the login screen like this:
sudo ./focalgdm3 --reset
¹ See "The Options Question" down near the bottom of the blog post if you're interested