Replace Manufacturer Logo in Ubuntu 22.04 | 22.10 Startup Screen

Ubuntu shows your computer manufacturer logo in the startup animation screen since 20.04 LTS. User can however replace it with system logo. And, this simple tutorial will show you how.

Most Linux’s boot animation screen is handled by Plymouth with specific theme. By editing the theme configuration file can do the trick to disable the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) logo, and changing the background image to use system logo instead.

Boot animation screen after this tutorial

Step 1: Disable manufacturer logo

Ubuntu uses “/usr/share/plymouth/themes/bgrt/bgrt.plymouth” as default Plymouth theme, user can simply edit the file to configure the default startup splash screen.

Tip: For XUbuntu, KUbuntu, and other Debian/Ubuntu based system, use this command sudo update-alternatives --display default.plymouth to find out the default theme.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to edit the file:

sudo gedit /usr/share/plymouth/themes/bgrt/bgrt.plymouth

For Ubuntu 22.10 replace gedit in command with nano text editor.

2. When the file opens, find out and set value of ‘UseFirmwareBackground’ to false under boot-up, reboot, and shutdown sections.

After saving the change (for nano, press Ctrl+X, type y and hit Enter), the boot animation screen will look like:

Step 2: Set Ubuntu System Logo

After disabled OEM logo, you may also add system logo (or any other image) in the original position. I don’t know if there’s a configure option or not, but you may add a background image to do the job.

1. First, create a background image in size of your screen resolution (check it in Setting -> Displays) via an image editor, such as GIMP. And, put the Ubuntu logo (‘/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/bgrt-fallback.png’) into desired position.

In case you don’t know how to manually create an image, here are 2 images (1366×768, and 1920×1080) I created. You may click download and use them for free.

2. Then, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to put the background image into ‘/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/’ and rename to background-tile.png.

sudo cp ~/Downloads/splash-1920.png /usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/background-tile.png

Replace ~/Downloads/splash-1920.png in command with path to your photo image. Or open folders as administrator and do the copy and paste things via mouse drag and drop action.

Done!

(Optional) Copy original Plymouth theme to another and set as default

The changes you made will be override once Ubuntu updated the Plymouth package (though rarely). As a workaround, you may make a copy of default theme with different name, then edit and apply it.

1. First open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to navigate to plymouth theme folder:

cd /usr/share/plymouth/themes/

2. Create a new theme sub-folder and paste the default theme into that folder:

sudo mkdir bgrt-no-oem && sudo cp bgrt/bgrt.plymouth bgrt-no-oem/

3. Install the new theme you just copied via command:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/bgrt-no-oem/bgrt.plymouth 100

4. Finally apply the new theme by running command and type the corresponding number:

sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth

After that, you can edit the new file to configure the boot animation screen.

Published
Categorized as Howtos

By Ji m

I'm a freelance blogger who started using Ubuntu in 2007 and wishes to share my experiences and some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers. Please comment to remind me outdated tutorial! And, notify me if you find any typo/grammar/language mistakes. English is not my native language. Contact me via ubuntuhandbook1@gmail.com Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/ubuntuhandbook1

11 comments

  1. I can’t download pictures (i use firefox, they are not even present in the list of media on the webpage)
    Why is your background white in your example ?

    1. They are transparent images displayed as white due to web-page’s background.

      And, it’s not hard to create your own background image for boot splash screen:
      1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and copy Ubuntu Logo file into home directory:

      sudo cp /usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/bgrt-fallback.png ~/

      2. Search for and install GIMP image editor if you don’t have it, from Ubuntu Software.
      3. Open GIMP image editor. When it opens, press Ctrl+N to open the dialog to create new image.
      4. Then, set image width and height to fit your screen resolution. Click ‘Advanced Options’ and set Fill with Transparency.
      5. Once the transparent image created in the image editor, press Ctrl+Alt+O to open dialog and select the bgrt-fallback.png file to insert into the image. (The logo will be in center of image automatically, though you may press ‘M’ and move it to anywhere you want, or press ‘Q’ and click the logo to align its position)
      6. Finally, press Ctrl+Shift+E to open export dialog, and save it to your selected folder with desired file-name (with .png extension recommended).

      1. OK for the white background which is in fact transparent (as explained in post)

        There is no special difficulties about creating my own image, I just wanted to download your to have a model (and be able to put my own image at the right position)

  2. goodmorning,
    the tutorial is ok for reboot, but on startup always shows firmware logo and not custom, why?

    thanks

    1. Make sure you have set “UseFirmwareBackground=false” for 3 sections: ‘boot-up’, ‘reboot’, ‘shutdown’ in the configuration file.

      1. Hi Ji m,
        I see this message since I installed Ubuntu 22 few days ago …
        everything works fine but I’m annoyed by this message – is there any way I can disable it so I don’t see it on boot when ever I’m starting the laptop?

        [ 1.138583] i801_smbus 0000:00:1f .3: Transaction timeout
        [ 1.342657] i801_smbus 0000:00: 1f .3: Transaction timeout
        /dev/sda2: clean, 315056/61022208 files, 8341737/244059136 blocks

        Many thanks!

        1. This could be a hardware issue or conflict to other modules/services. According to this bug reports, you can try (open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T) running command after boot:

          modprobe i2c-i801 disable_features=0x10

          There’s even a blog post talking about it. And, it recommends to edit the grub option via command:

          sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

          and add rule to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”i2c-i801.disable_features=0x10 quiet splash”

          1. Thank you for the swift answer – but it wasn’t that
            I still see those 3 lines in a split of a second after i rebooted laptop

          2. i don’t have any issues I just don’t want to see those 3 lines when I’m starting laptop… any more suggestions? All other posts on that subject have real issues like time delay, stuck on screen etc. Mine is like split of a second long…

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