How to make the lock screen look like the login screen?

Question

Is there any way to make the login screen from a locked session (either by using Ctrl+Alt+L or from a screen timeout) look like the login screen when you're starting a new session? I hate that everything on the lock screen aside from the password input is black.

Answer 1

GDM

You can't make the lock screen look like the login screen.

However, you can use a theme for the lock screen. There are quite a few available at gnome-look.org. Here's an example.

Answer 2

GDM

The answer may be a little bit late, but aside from setting the theme of the actual unlock dialog you can also set the background (i.e. the black space around the dialog) to whatever image you like. Just run the following command in the terminal:

sudo gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename --type string /usr/share/backgrounds/Holes_by_FireCobold.jpg

Replace the last path in the command with the path to the image you desire to use. Do not forget to restart your desktop session (or try to restart gconfd-2 by killing it, at least).

EDIT: unless you configured the background of the login screen (e.g. via Ubuntu Tweak), the above command will also change it.

Answer 3

LightDM

This was planned 12.04 -here is the bug report. However, it did not make the final release.

• How do I subscribe to a bug?

Answer 4

If you are somewhat proficient at C and a little bit of GTK, it's possible to have the lock screen look like (but not be!) the login screen -- since your main concern seems to be the ugliness of the lock box?

You'd do this by modifying the sources of the gnome-screensaver package, which provides the lock screen.

For tips, please see the How did you figure this out? section at the end of this answer. The original question was about repositioning the lock-box to the bottom-left instead of the center. For what you want, you'd move it to the left, make the grey background transparent, and change the sizes of the username and "Password:" text appropriately.

From my experience, the code you need to change is most probably only in two files: gs-lock-plug.c and gs-windows-x11.c.

If you try this and have any questions, please ask in a comment and I'll try my best to point you in the right direction.