How to Change your Linux Bootloader Theme

Almost all desktop Linux distributions are using the GRUB bootloader by default to enable boot management of the system. It is a free and open source piece of software that is part of the GNU project.

While the bootloader screen where the user selects the OS he/she wants to boot into doesn’t last more than a few seconds, you can still choose to customize that screen with a special theme of your liking.

A good user has combined most of the available GRUB themes on the Internet in a GitHub repository. All you have to do is to download the GRUB theme you want and then integrate it into your GRUB bootloader.

Change your GRUB Theme

The steps you should follow are below:

1. Extract the theme you want under the /boot/grub/themes folder (create it if it doesn’t exist).
2. Edit the /etc/default/grub file with sudo privileges using your favorite text editor (such as nano) and do the following changes:
   • Add or uncomment the GRUB_THEME= line so that it points to the theme.txt file of the GRUB theme you downloaded under the /etc/grub/themes folder. For example, it should look like this with one of these themes: GRUB_THEME=/boot/grub/themes/fallout-grub-theme-master/theme.txt
   • Also add or uncomment the GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 line and replace 640x480 with your desired screen resolution if you would like to use a different one than GRUB’s default.
   • Make sure there is no GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden line in the file, or at least, it is commented (Put the # symbol before it if it exists to comment it out).
   • Make sure GRUB_TIMEOUT=15 is also set in the file or at least to any time of your choosing other than 15 seconds (should be above 5 seconds so that you get a chance to see the boot screen!).
3. Run the sudo update-grub on Debian-based distributions or sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg on Fedora-based distributions instead.
4. Reboot your system and you should see the new theme applied:

There are lots of GRUB themes that you can choose between on the GitHub repository and also on the GNOME Look website. Check them out if you would like to change your boot screen further.

You can also play with the theme.txt file of your chosen theme to change the way it looks like to your taste.