Let’s admit it. When you boot up your Linux computer, the Grub menu looks ugly. Luckily, if you don’t like how your Grub boot menu looks, you can configure it according to your tastes. The most striking change is using a custom background. We’ll show you here how to easily change the Grub background.
Install Grub Customizer
To install grub customizer on Arch, Manjaro, and compatible distributions, use:
sudo pacman -S grub-customizer
On Fedora, you can try:
sudo dnf install grub-customizer
On Debian, Ubuntu, and compatible distributions, you can bring it on board with:
sudo apt install grub-customizer
Afterward, find it among the rest of your installed applications and run it.
Change the Background
Grub Customizer offers many options that allow you to modify your Grub boot menu, from tweaking its entries to configuring its looks.
Go to “Appearance settings.” You will find the option you need there.
On the left of Grub Customizer’s window, you will find a handful of options that define its appearance. Click on the last one, the “(None)” button under “background image.”
Note that if your Grub already has a background defined, you’ll see that instead of “(None)” in this button.
Choose the image file you want to use as a background for your Grub boot menu from the requester that appears.
You can choose files directly in JPG or PNG format.
Grub Customizer will load the image you selected and present a preview of how your boot menu will look. If your wallpaper’s colors render any text unreadable, you can use the rest of the options on the left to change the color of your font and its background, both when unselected and highlighted.
When you’re happy with how your new wallpaper and menu text combination looks, click the “Save” button on the top left to save your tweaks.
Reboot your computer to see the changes. If the grub menu doesn’t appear, it may be configured to load the default operating system directly. To force Grub to show up, after rebooting and straight after the BIOS/UEFI screen, keep Shift pressed on your keyboard.
If you want, you can dive deeper into Grub and Grub Customizer to make your computer’s boot menu your own. Changing its background and primary colors, though, will probably be more than enough for most users.
If you are wondering what the Linux boot process is and how Grub plays a part, we have a tutorial here for you. Have you customized your Grub boot menu to your liking? What changes and tweaks have your applied? Tell us in the comments section below.
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OK's real life started at around 10, when he got his first computer - a Commodore 128. Since then, he's been melting keycaps by typing 24/7, trying to spread The Word Of Tech to anyone interested enough to listen. Or, rather, read.
Perfect
I am trying to use GRUB Customizer in PCLinuxOS and have encountered several problems.
1) Customizer must be run with root privileges.
2) Customizer wants the ‘background.png’ in a specific root directory. It will not recognize an image file in a user directory. Even when the full path to the file is provided, it throws up a “.png file cannot be found”
3) Customizer uses only ‘.png’ files. It will not accept ‘jpg’ files. On system restart it throws up “file is not a .png file”
None of these limitations were mentioned in the article.
I use grub customizer and agree with you, yet I have never seen a tutorial that explains it completely.
I was thoroughly frustrated before I figured it out. And even using .png files I have had ones that just would not be found and work. To fix these problems as sudo under boot>grub I made another folder, named it, and put the custom picture there. If there is a pic that does not work, I have found taking a .png file and pasting the desired picture over it I want and then saving it again as a .png file works.
I have notice all to often in Linux tutorials the author assumes know the unknown because they do. I had the same problem with accessing my cell phone on my laptop. I followed tutorial after tutorial, and they never worked. I stumbles on a USB driver one day while looking through Google play store, and that solved the problem. Yet every tutorial told me to install MTP to my computer, not one told me I needed a USB driver on my phone.
I tryed doing this but when I booted the whole image was screwed it looked like 16 colors…
Does anyone know how to fix this 16 color issue
For me, this doesn’t work at all. I am on Zorin OS.
I start grub-customizer, log in as root and make the changes I want.
Afterwards, I hit the Save button and the configuration is saved.
Then I exit grub-customizer and run ‘sudo grub-update’, just to be sure. I can see that all my changes are saved.
However, when I reboot, the default grub menu shows up: no changes in the menu, no colors, no background image, nothing…