How to Customize GNOME 3 Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 17.10<\/h1>\n

Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark comes with GNOME 3 Desktop pre-installed. GNOME 3 is a customizable desktop environment. You can tweak it to fit your everyday need. The icons, theme, cursor theme and many other things can be changed.<\/p>\n

In this article, I will show you how to customize the GNOME 3 Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark. Let\u2019s get started.<\/p>\n

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Installing Required Tools:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In this article, I will use GNOME Tweak Tool to customize the GNOME 3 Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark. If you don\u2019t have it installed already, you can install GNOME Tweak Tool using the following command:<\/p>\n

  $ sudo apt-get update  $ sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool  <\/pre>\n
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Once it\u2019s installed, you can start GNOME Tweak Tool from GNOME 3 Application Menu. Just click on Show Applications icon <\/a>\u00a0on the bottom left.<\/p>\n
Now search for \u201ctweak\u201d and click on the Tweaks icon as shown below.<\/p>\n
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GNOME Tweak Tool should start.<\/p>\n
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Change the Position of the Titlebar Buttons:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
On Ubuntu 17.10, the default placement of the Titlebar buttons has changed. On earlier versions of Ubuntu, the buttons were on the left side of the Titlebar. In Ubuntu 17.10, the buttons are in the right side of the Titlebar.<\/p>\n
If you prefer the Titlebar buttons to be on the left of the Titlebar as in Ubuntu 16.04, open GNOME Tweak Tool and go to Windows.<\/p>\n
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Then on the bottom right, on \u201cTitlebar Buttons\u201d section, flip the Placement Switch to Left. By default, it\u2019s Right.<\/p>\n
Before:<\/p>\n
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After:<\/p>\n
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All the Titlebar buttons should show up on the left side of the Titlebar from now on.<\/p>\n
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Show and Hide Icons from Desktop:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
You can show and hide icons from your Ubuntu 17.10 GNOME 3 desktop. You can also display specific icons like Home, Network, Trash, Mounted Volumes.<\/p>\n
By default, some icons are shown in the desktop. If you don\u2019t like icons on the desktop, open GNOME Tweak Tool and go to Desktop.<\/p>\n
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On the \u201cIcons on Desktop\u201d section, flip the \u201cShow Icons\u201d switch to \u201cOFF\u201d. It\u2019s on by default.<\/p>\n
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You can see that; all the icons are gone from the desktop.<\/p>\n
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Changing Cursor Theme:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
You can change the default cursor of Ubuntu 17.10 Desktop. Open GNOME Tweak Tool and go to \u201cAppearances\u201d.<\/p>\n
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On the \u201cThemes\u201d section, click on the \u201cCursor\u201d selector. A list of cursors that are installed on Ubuntu 17.10 should pop-up. Select any of them, and your cursor should change.<\/p>\n
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Installing new Cursor Theme:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
You can also install a new Cursor Theme. Go to https:\/\/www.gnome-look.org\/p\/1148692<\/a> and download the Mac OS X cursor theme. This is the one I will use for the demonstration but you may use a different one.<\/p>\n
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Once the download is complete, go to the HOME directory, and from the Nautilus menu, click on \u201cShow Hidden Files\u201d. You should be able to see all the hidden files now.<\/p>\n
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Create a new directory, \u2018.icons\u2019 in the HOME directory.<\/p>\n
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Now open the downloaded archive by double clicking it.<\/p>\n
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Right click on the directory inside the compressed file as shown in the screenshot and click on \u201cExtract\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Now select the \u201c.icons\u201d folder you just created in the HOME directory and click on the green \u201cExtract\u201d button.<\/p>\n
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Now close GNOME Tweak Tool if it\u2019s opened and open it again. Go to \u201cAppearances\u201d and select the new cursor theme from there.<\/p>\n
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You can see that the cursor has changed.<\/p>\n
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Changing GNOME 3 Desktop Theme:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
First, we have to enable \u201cUser Theme\u201d GNOME Shell Extension to use custom GNOME Shell Themes. To do that, install the following package from the command line:<\/p>\n
$ sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions<\/pre>\n
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Once the installation is complete, restart your computer.<\/p>\n
Once your computer starts, open GNOME Tweak Tool and go to \u201cExtensions\u201d.<\/p>\n
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From here scroll down a little bit till you find \u201cUser themes\u201d and enable \u201cUser themes\u201d by flipping the switch as shown below.<\/p>\n
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Once you enable \u201cUser themes\u201d, close GNOME Tweak Tool and open it again. Go to \u201cAppearances\u201d tab and you should see the following window:<\/p>\n
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Did you notice any change? Take a look, the Shell in \u201cThemes\u201d section is enabled now.<\/p>\n
Now find a theme of your choice. I will install Pop GTK Icon theme in this article.<\/p>\n
To install Pop GTK icon theme, run the following commands:<\/p>\n
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:system76\/pop<\/pre>\n
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  $ sudo apt-get update  $ sudo apt-get install pop-theme  <\/pre>\n
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Once the installation is complete, open your GNOME Tweak Tool and change the \u201cApplications\u201d, \u201cCursor\u201d, \u201cIcons\u201d and \u201cShell\u201d themes to Pop as shown in the screenshot.<\/p>\n
Before:<\/p>\n
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After:<\/p>\n
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Installing Icons and Themes from Compressed Archives:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
You may find some icons and themes developers distribute their work as compressed archives. If this happens, then you can just extract these icons or themes and put them in either \u201c.icons\u201d or \u201c.themes\u201d directory inside your HOME directory. If these directories don\u2019t exist already, just create them.<\/p>\n
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If what you\u2019re installing is an icon or cursor, put the extracted directory in the \u201c.icons\u201d directory inside HOME directory.<\/p>\n
If what you\u2019re installing is a theme, put the extracted directory in the \u201c.themes\u201d directory inside HOME directory.<\/p>\n
Then just open GNOME Tweak Tool and select the Theme, Icons or Cursor you installed from the list.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not possible to show everything because there are so many themes and icons out there. But I can assure you, if the theme you\u2019re trying to install is compatible with the version of GNOME Shell you\u2019re using, it will work.<\/p>\n
Run the following command to find out what version GNOME Shell you\u2019re using:<\/p>\n
$ gnome-session-properties --version<\/pre>\n
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This is how you customize GNOME 3 Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 17.10 using GNOME Tweak Tool. Thanks for reading this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How to Customize GNOME 3 Desktop Environment on Ubuntu 17.10 Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark comes with GNOME 3 Desktop pre-installed. GNOME 3 is a customizable desktop environment. You can tweak it to fit your everyday need. The icons, theme, cursor theme and many other things can be changed. In this article, I will show you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":119845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onet.com.vn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}