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[Quick Tip] Hide User List in Ubuntu 18.04 Login Screen

Last updated: May 23, 2020

gnome shell

The Gnome login screen normally shows a list of available users to log in as. For those who want to disable showing the user list, and manually type a username to login with, below I will show you how.

Open terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard, when it opens, run following commands one by one:

1. Run command to get access to root:

sudo -i

Type in your password (no visual feedback while typing) when it prompts and hit Enter.

2. In the terminal, run command to allow gdm to make connections to the X server:

xhost +SI:localuser:gdm

3. Then switch to user gdm, which is required to run gsettings to configure gdm settings.

su gdm -l -s /bin/bash

Update May 2020: For Ubuntu 20.04, you may need to run one more command:

export DISPLAY=:0

4. Finally hide user list from login screen using Gsettings:

gsettings set org.gnome.login-screen disable-user-list true

After that, restart your computer and enjoy!

How to Restore

To restore the change, open terminal and re-do previous steps, except running the last command with:

gsettings set org.gnome.login-screen disable-user-list false
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    6 responses to [Quick Tip] Hide User List in Ubuntu 18.04 Login Screen

    1. der April 21, 2018 at 12:05 pm

      Can you write about installing Sopcast and Viber in Ubuntu 18.04?
      Thank you!

    2. joe August 2, 2018 at 1:44 pm

      Does NOT work. Still have list even after reboot.

      (process:2057): dconf-CRITICAL **: 09:42:20.969: unable to create directory ‘/run/user/0/dconf’: Permission denied. dconf will not work properly.

      (process:2057): dconf-CRITICAL **: 09:42:20.969: unable to create directory ‘/run/user/0/dconf’: Permission denied. dconf will not work properly.

      (process:2057): dconf-CRITICAL **: 09:42:20.970: unable to create directory ‘/run/user/0/dconf’: Permission denied. dconf will not work properly.

    3. Zorba October 8, 2018 at 12:05 am

      Works like a champ. You NEVER want to display a list of available users unless you care less than zero about security!

    4. Bruno Correia December 7, 2018 at 5:12 pm

      Thank you. Work without problems.

    5. i’m helping! December 11, 2018 at 3:08 pm

      Something has changed, I’ve used this plenty of times, but it stopped working.
      I had to include -l (lowercase L) when switching to gdm or I got the permission denied that joe received.

      su gdm -l -s /bin/bash