Changing the lockscreen Wallpaper

Support and Help
1

Hello everyone I know this maybe a simple question but how do I change the lockscreen wallpaper and maybe the text. I have the gnome tweak installed but seems to not change anything. This should be something that we can do with just a click

I am using Ubuntu 24.04

2

They did refined this to a gnome plugin about 8 years ago

gnome-shell-extension-unlockDialogBackground

Is that the one installed?

If that doesn’t work most likely the javascript handler for gnome isn’t installed.

try installing:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell
3

Thank you for the fast reply, Yes I have the gnome-shell-extension installed. I will run the command you suggedted. I will be back with the results

1 Like
4

After trying to change the lock screen wallpaper I had no luck. I also tried using the dcon.editor

5

Hello,

even though I saw that the creator has moved to an extension, the ubuntu-gdm-set-background script that he had created worked like a charm, even though the support was supposed to be for older versions; yet, you had to tweak the code in order to make it work for newer ones.

I haven’t tested the extension, so I cannot tell. You might want to try the script, yet be careful.

There is also the gdm-settings app under synaptic, which you could try as well. I think that it works for the lock screen apart from the login screen, yet I had tested it a long time ago.

Regards!

6

Thank you, I tried the GDM Settings app it did not have any effect what so ever.

I don’t think I want to risk using a script to do someting simple like changing the lock screen wallpaper.

Thanks for trying much apprecated

7

Well that part of it is all script.

adwaita.xml is the file that sets the desktop and lock screen. If you want to edit the file directly.

I thought you were trying to get the gnome plugin to work.

8

Hello and thank you, I was trying to use the Gnome tweak to change the lock screen wallpaper, but nothing will change it. I am not sure if it’s something I’m doing wrong seems pretty simple yet not possible.

9

Hello,

having a recently installed plucky system, as all of us, I had the default gdm login screen. So I decided to change it to something different. Since plucky is a new/latest version the old programs need some small tweaking in order to make them work.

I have been using ubuntu-gdm-set-background for some years now, for different versions of ubuntu, without any issue. Now I can tell more things, since I tried it very recently. Also, if you upgrade, you don’t have to try it anew, that’s why I didn’t remember so well the process.

Under the guidelines it says that the script is working only for versions 20.04 till 22.04; yet in order for someone to make it work for > 22.04, someone has to add the following in the code:
elif … || [ “$codename” == “plucky” ] ||
after the similar string for kinetic.
Then someone has to issue the command:
sudo ./ubuntu-gdm-set-background --image /path to desired image
where /path to desired image is the path of the image you want to add to your login screen. It has also the option to revert back to default if you do not like it. Just an info: you do not have to revert to default, if you want to try another one instead.

I do understand that you think that this might be an easy thing to do (at least for older versions it was easier I think), yet the developers are changing the code from version to version, so all programs are not eligible to work when version changes. With this program and this small tweak I’m able to change the login screen for every version till plucky without any issue.

Regards!