materia-nord/INSTALL_GDM_THEME.md

2.1 KiB

How to change the GDM theme

To change the GDM (lock/login screen) theme, you need to replace the system's default GNOME Shell theme.

⚠️ Cautions ⚠️

  • If the replacement fails, your desktop environment will not work properly. So please be careful if doing this.
  • When applying this, other third-party GNOME Shell themes would look broken until you restore to the original theme.
  • If GNOME Shell has been updated and restored to the original theme, you will need to install this again.

    Tip: On Arch Linux, you can automatically reinstall the GDM theme by creating a hook file. For example, if you use Materia-compact as your GDM theme, put this file in the /usr/share/libalpm/hooks/ directory.

Requirements

  • glib-compile-resources — The package name depends on the distro.
    • glib2 (Arch Linux)
    • glib2-devel (Fedora, openSUSE, etc.)
    • libglib2.0-dev-bin (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.)
  • libxml2-utils — Ubuntu users only.

Installation

  1. Back up the original theme file first. If you are already using a custom GDM theme, skip this:
sudo cp -av /usr/share/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-theme.gresource{,~}
  1. Select a GTK theme to decide which variant to install.
  2. Replace the default theme file:
THEME_NAME="$(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme | sed "s/'//g")"
THEME_SRC_DIR="/usr/share/themes/$THEME_NAME/gnome-shell"
sudo glib-compile-resources --target="/usr/share/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-theme.gresource" --sourcedir="$THEME_SRC_DIR" "$THEME_SRC_DIR/gnome-shell-theme.gresource.xml"
  1. Reload the theme. If you are running GNOME Shell, press Alt + F2 then type rt.

Uninstallation

  1. Restore to the original theme file from the backup:
sudo mv -v /usr/share/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-theme.gresource{~,}
  1. Reload the theme. If you are running GNOME Shell, press Alt + F2 then type rt.