Customize Gnome Desktop To Look Like macOS
Tags: fedora, gnome, customize, ubuntu
Published: 2021-03-05 07:03:15

Hey, today, I'll be walking on how to turn your Linux OS to look like macOS giving it a lively look and feel. This approach has been tested.

Here are some screenshots:

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vttdl9941fjz3ocwrr50.png)![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/weac00p3pqskf0xkus32.png)![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/wxw0t4e5w0wmtwaxzesn.png)![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yb6678olxzbzlfhfs4s5.png)

Alright, let's get started. Firstly we need to install some tools that will enable us to customize our gnome. This tool is well known it gives us the ability to tweak things around in our gnome.


Stage 1 (Tweak tool)
-------

open your terminal and type the following code. If you already have them installed you can skip to the next stage:

```terminal
   sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool gnome-shell-extensions chrome-gnome-shell
```
For Fedora users  type:

```terminal
sudo dnf install gnome-tweak-tool gnome-shell-extensions chrome-gnome-shell
```
Once done, open Mozilla Firefox and enter the URL  https://extensions.gnome.org/, where we'll be activating the gnome browser extension that will enable us to achieve our goal. 

Sometimes you might have done this already but if you haven't, you'll see  **click here to install browser extension** option. Click and install it.

Now that we've activated the gnome browser extension, refresh your page to see the list of extensions.

Stage 2 (Gnome Browser theme extensions activation)
-------
It's time to start installing the gnome extensions we need to spice up our Linux OS.

2.1) Type on the page search box **User Themes** when gotten click on the name to see more details about it (this extension Loads shell themes from user directory). On the page that opened at the right side of the name you'll see a toggle button, click to turn it on. If it's already 'on' just leave it. Once clicked, it'll pop up permission to install the extension, select install.

Do the same for these other extensions: 

**Frippery Move Clock, 
Dynamic Panel Transparency, 
Compiz windows effect, 
Panel OSD**

2.2) Okay, remember you installed a **gnome-tweak-tool**? Now open it. 
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5so9o9pna4xu3hturdmp.png)

2.2.1) Click on **Windows** at the side menu and activate **Center New Windows**

2.2.2) Click on **Windows Titlebars** at the same side menu and change **Placement** to **left** and close the tweak. (This is to change the position of your minimize, maximize, and close button 

2.2.3) Search for **extensions** on your Linux global search. Sometimes it's separated from the Tweak tool. If yours is merged together within the Tweak tool, just click on **Extensions** and Activate **Dynamic Panel Transparency, Compiz windows effect, and Frippery Move Clock** if they're not yet active.

2.2.4) Click on the settings icon beside **Panel OSD** activation button, drag the  **Horizontal position[%] from 0%(left) to 100%(right)** slider to about **98.0** or your required desire (_this is the position where your popup notification will be showing_). Do the same for the vertical axis as you wish. Click on **show test notification** to know its display position. If satisfied, close it.

Stage 3 (Themes installation)
-------

We'll be installing themes here. 

3.1) Navigate to https://www.pling.com/p/1403328/ using gnome Firefox (recommended). Here, we'll download "WhiteSur Gtk Theme". Click on the **files** menu under the displayed image and "download" **WhiteSur-light.tar.xz** and **WhiteSur-dark.tar.xz**. (Do not click the install button).

3.1.1) Navigate to your downloads or file downloads location, extract, and copy the extracted folder/directory.

3.1.2) Navigate to your **home** directory, here, we'll be creating two directories called **.themes** and **.icons** these are hidden directories which means we'll not see them if not set to visible. For us to access them, we'll click on the 3 dots icon at the top right corner of the window and select **show hidden files**

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5flkda7x3nircwdglo6l.png)

3.1.3) Paste the copied extracted **WhiteSur-light** and **WhiteSur-dark** into the **.themes** directory. Note! the extracted version are usually two folder levels so make sure the contents are one folder level. Eg. *WhiteSur-light -> WhiteSur-light -> contents* (this is two folder level and it will not work). It should be *WhiteSur-light -> contents.*

3.2) Open the Tweak tool

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/c14oh3jivzlngv2e105k.png)

Click on **Appearance** at the aside menu, on the Applications value, click and select **WhiteSur-light** to get a light macOS look and feel or choose **WhiteSur-dark** to get a darkened version. Do the same for the **shell** value (note: do not click on the box with the directory icon). 

3.3) You can also set the transparency level of your windows by clicking on the **extensions** menu of the Tweak tool, **Dynamic Panel Transparency**, then on the Settings icon next to it. A window will open, click on the **Background** menu, enable opacity by activating the **Enable custom opacity**. Here you can set the opacity of **Unmaximized Opacity** maybe 50% or to your taste.

At this point, you have managed to change the theme of your Linux OS. But we're not yet done.

Stage 4 (Icons and Cursor)
-------

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yb6678olxzbzlfhfs4s5.png)

In the previous stage, we've successfully changed our Gnome theme. Now let's work on the icons and cursor.

4.1) Navigate through your browser (Firefox recommended) to https://www.pling.com/p/1399044. Here we'll be downloading the **BigSur icon theme** for our icons theme. Click on the **files** menu under the displayed image and "download" **BigSur-black.tar.xz** (note: do not click on the install). Also, navigate to https://www.pling.com/p/1355701/ to download **McMojave-cursors.tar.xz** for cursor theme.

4.1.2) Just as in the case of the *themes*, navigate to your downloads folder, locate and extract the **BigSur.tar.xz** and **McMojave-cursors.tar.xz**

4.1.3) Cut/copy the extracted version to the **.icons** folder in the *home* directory which you created earlier.

Now, you'll have about 3 different folders in the *.icons* directory.

4.2) Open the Tweak tool, click on **Appearance** at the aside menu, on the Cursor value, click and select **McMojave-cursors** and on the Icon value change it to **BigSur-black** to get a darken folder theme.

Now your icon and cursor have been set.

*Please permit me to sip my cup of coffee* 🤓 

Stage 5 (Cairo-dock)
------- 
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6ghlq73dbxafscrbkjtt.png)

5.1) Open your terminal and type the code:

```terminal
sudo apt install cairo-dock
```
Fedora:
```terminal
sudo dnf install cairo-dock
```

5.2) Open the Tweak tool, and select **Startup Applications**, and add **Cairo-Dock** among the list.

5.3) Open the Cairo-Dock, grant access to the permission that popped up.

5.4) Navigate to https://www.pling.com/p/1401527/ to download **mcOS BS for Cairo Dock** a theme for Cairo-Dock. Download **mcOS-BS-White.tar.gz** and **mcOS-BS-Dark.tar.gz**

5.5) Right-click on the open Cairo-Dock and select **configure**, choose **Themes** from the top menu, click on **Load theme** menu, on the bottom right side of the window, click the **box with upload icon** and locate and select the downloaded **mcOS-BS-White.tar.gz** or **mcOS-BS-Dark.tar.gz**, click **OK** to load it.

5.6) Click **Apply** and confirm the changes made and close. Awesome!

5.7) Let's add **Launcher** (You may choose to ignore this if you like) but if you want it, right-click on the Cairo-Dock and select **Add** then **Custom launcher**. An icon like a *Help icon* gets added to the dock.

5.8) Right-click on the Cairo-Dock and select **configure**, select **Current Items** from the menu, right-click on **Application menu**, and remove.

5.9) Click and drag the **New launcher** to the top of the list. Rename the Launcher's name field to **Launchpad**, the Image's name or path field to **Launchpad.png** or **Launchpad.svg** whichever works for you. On the **command to launch on click** paste the below code:

```code
dbus-send --session --type=method_call --dest=org.gnome.Shell /org/gnome/Shell org.gnome.Shell.Eval string:'Main.shellDBusService.ShowApplications()'
```
and click **Apply** and close.

Stage 6 (Albert-launcher)
-------
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qzmxqk314emqgiswkjn9.png)

Wow! We're really progressing. Now let us install Alber-launcher.

6.1) Open your terminal and type the following codes one after the other:

```terminal
# Full example for Ubuntu 20.04
curl https://build.opensuse.org/projects/home:manuelschneid3r/public_key | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/manuelschneid3r/xUbuntu_20.04/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:manuelschneid3r.list

sudo wget -nv https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:manuelschneid3r/xUbuntu_20.04/Release.key -O "/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home:manuelschneid3r.asc"

sudo apt update

sudo apt install albert
```

Fedora
```terminal
sudo rpm --import https://build.opensuse.org/projects/home:manuelschneid3r/public_key

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:manuelschneid3r/Fedora_32/home:manuelschneid3r.repo

sudo dnf install albert
```

6.2) Open and run Albert

6.3) A permission to send data, you can choose No or Yes as you may wish.

6.4) First time running Albert you show set the hotkeys to launch it. Click **OK** and proceed to set your configuration key.

6.5) set the **Hotkey** to a shortcut-key you'll be using to open the **albert launcher**. Also, Set the frontend to be **Widget Box Model**, Terminal to be **Gnome Terminal**, Theme to be **Arc Dark Blue** or your own choice. Increase the **Amount of results** to the highest number.

6.6) Click on the Extensions menu and select **Applications, Calculator, Chrome bookmarks, firefox bookmarks, files, External extensions, snippets, systems, Terminal, and WebSearch**

6.6.1) Click on the Firefox option selected, and select **Fuzy Search and **Open with firefox by default**

6.6.2) Click on the Files option selected, and select **Audio, Video, Document, Folders, and  Images** and close.

Stage 7 (Change login screen - Only for Ubuntu 20.xx)
-------
Before we do this, make you have the path to the background you want to use ready.

7.1) Open your terminal and type in:

```terminal
sudo apt install git libglib2.0-dev
```

7.2) Clone this git repo:

```terminal
git clone https://github.com/PRATAP-KUMAR/focalgdm3.git
```

7.3) Change your login screen:

```terminal
sudo ./focalgdm3/focalgdm3 --set
```

Follow the options on the terminal - **1 for Image, 2 for Color.** Here we're only changing the image. So select 1.

7.4) Set your background image path which you already have. Eg: **/home/..../filename.png**

7.5) Use this to rest your login screen back to default if you don't like the changed background:

```terminal
sudo ./focalgdm3/focalgdm3 --set
```

Wow! this is really a journey. I hope this helped you?

Thanks for your time.

If you like what I did feel free to:
[![](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nw78dydwftsjxtybbe51.png)](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/umekalu)