How to change theme for GRUB2?

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LUbuntu Version: 26.04 LTS

Desktop Environment: LXQt

Grub version: 2.14-2ubuntu2

Hi,

I want to change the theme, background color and font color of GRUB2 bootloader. I would like the background to be black and the font to be white, similar to the old GRUB theme. How to do that?

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I’ll provide a link to

which maybe worth a look. Yeah it’s kinda old, but it can still apply.

Do note however, that I have hardware today that boots up Lubuntu showing the colorful GRUB themes completely in Quality Assurance testing, yet on other hardware it’s all white text on black & no-themes are evident.. but those issues relate to hardware differences.

The default Lubuntu grub theme has a blue background with the user told to “Select a boot option” under that is the lubuntu name & logo, a list of options provided in white text with the lubuntu logo to the left of the current selection, current selection text showing in yellow… But I don’t see that on all boxes; as some show purely a generic grub screen of white text & no background blue, no logos etc… but it’s the same code running.

guiverc@d7050-next:/de2900/lubuntu_64$   cat /usr/share/grub/themes/lubuntu-grub-theme/theme.txt
# Custom grub theme for Lubuntu

desktop-image: "background.png"
desktop-image-scale-method: "stretch"
title-text: "Select a boot option"
title-color: "#eff0f1"
message-color: "#eff0f1"
terminal-box: "terminal_*.png"

+ boot_menu {
  left = 20%
  width = 60%
  top = 33%
  height = 33%

Grub’s appearance (and it’s code), in my experience, is impacted by your machine firmware (ie. hardware); on some boxes its easy, others not as much.

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Hello hoa-t-le –

Please see:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MaintenanceFreeCustomGrub2Screen

-my bit to try and help-

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Hi @bashing-om ,

I added image.png to /boot/grub/. Then At line 122 where I see this line:
echo “if background_image make_system_path_relative_to_its_root “${1}”; then”
I addedd these three lines below with my color choices after line 122 and save the file:

echo " set color_normal=cyan/black"
echo " set menu_color_normal=yellow/black"
echo " set menu_color_highlight=red/black"

And I sudo-update-grub. Nothing happens.

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You can get the classic black-and-white look by creating a simple GRUB theme or editing an existing one. After making your changes, run sudo update-grub and reboot. If something doesn’t look right, share your current GRUB configuration and theme files so the community can help troubleshoot.

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See masonreed11t123454’s above entry.

I would not expect to see that anything happened as no other operating systems are added or looked for; update-grub has nothing to report.
I suggest that you reboot so grub is re-initialized, to see the effect.

-Maybe yes-

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guiverc’s method works for me. I added a black image to /usr/share/grub/themes/lubuntu-grub-theme, then modified theme.txt to receive that image and change font colors.

Thank you, everyone, for your help!

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I provided a link & comment; you made what I provided actually work for you, so it was you that made it into your solution !! Well done.

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A word of warning:

If you’re using TPM-backed FDE, you can’t change the GRUB theme. If you try, it causes a serious error.

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