How do I customize Gnome screen shield / curtain / login screen appearance?
Solution 1
Ubuntu
I use ubuntu 18.04, (also done this in 17.10) and as of how @cezanee-vahid said, you can find the CSS file here: /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/gdm3.css
and by changing this file you don't need to restart gnome
or do anything else, they will be changed by locking computer (or better to say will be reloaded).
so for changing clock size you only need to change font-size
and font-weight
for .screen-shield-clock-time
class.
also for if you want to get ride off that arrows in the bottom of the screen just set 0
for height
and width
of .screen-shield-arrows Gjs_Arrow
CSS selector. setting 0
for font-size
of .screen-shield-clock-date
will do the same for Date.
Arch
I'm not an Arch or even Arch-based distro user, but after reading ArchWiki about GDM it seems like you need to compile source files for GDM after changing them. also, the gdm3.css
file in Arch is named gnome-shell.css
so in conclusion, these spets are needed to change GDM theme in Arch:
- extracting the current GDM theme
- creating a
gnome-shell-theme.gresource.xml
file for the selected image files - changing
gnome-shell.css
file as you wish! - compiling the new GDM theme you have created
- replacing files under
/usr/share/gnome-shell
- restating
gdm.service
the ArhcWiki above have explained these steps detailed.
Solution 2
Not sure if this is a little too late but you can customize the values in /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/gdm3.css
and that does the trick. Just find the screen-shield-clock
class and make your changes. One simple thing I did to make it a little nicer is set the font-weight
to 300
and it improves the look a million times.
Related videos on Youtube
iago-lito
'considering leaving https://writing.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2301/sadly-it-is-time-for-me-to-join-the-exodus
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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iago-lito over 1 year
Gnome desktop seems configurable in various ways: in "Gnome settings", with gnome-extensions,
gnome-tweak-tool
,gsettings
ordconf-editor
.However, apart from this procedure to change the login screen background, which involves a little bit of glib compiling, I have found no way to customize the appearance of:
- the login screen (font, position, color and size of the login boxes)
- shield screen aka lock screen aka curtain (font, position, color, format and size of the clock, displayed messages, etc.)
I understand that Gnome philosophy is not to allocate much resource in tweaky-tweak-tweaking-tweakable stuffs. But I am suprised that such basic and harmless properties of these screens seem so difficult to access.
Is there a way I can access and tweak login / shield screen organization properties?
Are they hardcoded or is it just a matter of sneaking into a smallcurtain.xml
orloginscreen.json
?
Do I need to get into the sources and compile gnome myself? -
iago-lito about 6 yearsHey, not bad. This could help a lot, cheers :) Have you found any piece of documentation regarding the meaning of these values? I couldn't find any. Also, do I need to restart or recompile something? I couldn't get any of my changes happening. The file I've found is called
gnome-classic.css
. -
Cezanne Vahid about 6 yearsHuh. Perhaps in that same directory you can try tweaking
gnome-shell.css
orubuntu.css
-
iago-lito about 6 yearsNope, doesn't have any :\ Is there any doc about this somewhere?
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iago-lito about 5 yearsThank you for these precisions. Unfortunately, I can find no
gdm3.css
file on my system (this is archlinux speaking). The closest I have found are two files at/usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/{gnome-classic.css,gnome-classic-high-contrast.css}
, which do contain the properties you suggest. However, any change I make to these files seem to have no effect even after I restart my computer :\ Can I ask you where you have found these informations? Is there any official documentation about these files? -
aasmpro about 5 years@iago-lito i have updated the answer and think that it should work, I'm looking forward to your reply! and also for ubuntu i just found these things by playing around with
gdm3.css
file. -
iago-lito about 5 yearsGreat! The compilation was the step I've missed. Cheers :)
-
iago-lito about 5 yearsAs suggested there, just type
rt
in the<Alt+F2>
dialog box to restart the theme instead of restarting the wholegdm.service
.. it's easier and it doesn't require superuser permissions :) -
aasmpro about 5 yearsthat's great! thank you for feedback :)