Ever looked at the stock GNOME login screen and wanted to tweak a few things? Well, a new GDM Settings app may be able to help you.
Currently in an early stage of development (thus not really intended for mainstream use) Mazhar Hussain’s Login Manager Settings tools aims to unlock a legion of login screen functions to let users create a welcome screen that better suit their needs.
The developer of the tool describes it as “an app to manage settings (including theme and background) of GNOME’s Login Manager (GDM)” and—faux shock—that’s exactly what it does. As it’s built using Python, GTK+, and LibAdwaita it vibes nicely with the (upcoming) GNOME 42 release:
A ton of settings are exposed in the app, including options to:
- Change font, theme, icon set, cursor family
- Change background to different colour or image
- Configure top bar styling (including font, clock, options)
- Adjust touchpad scrolling direction, gestures, and speed
- Enable or disable Night Light on the login screen
- Show a welcome message
- Change distribution/desktop logo
- Enable/disable userlist
All pretty useful options catered for via a GUI rather than modifying gsettings keys manually.
Future features planned for inclusion include a gradient picker; option to blur the login screen background image; and a command-line interface with tab auto-complete.
Download GDM Settings
GDM Settings is under active development and yet to see a stable release. For this reason you probably shouldn’t try it out on your own system (or if you really want to be sure to have a backup/restore point, etc).
There’s also no PPA, Flatpak, or Snap build of GDM Settings available but a distro-agnostic .appimage is available to download from the project’s GitHub releases page. The app is also available from the AUR.
The GitHub page doesn’t make it clear which versions of GDM/GNOME the app is compatible with but given its use of libadwaita I’d wager it’s best used on GNOME 40 or above.
I’ll keep my eye on this app as development continues as, thus far, it’s promising stuff! Let me know what you think of it down in the comments.
Thanks Helio