Installing Grub-Customizer in Ubuntu 25.04 from PPA will output “Depends: policykit-1 but it is not installable” issue. Here are quick workarounds until it’s fixed upstream.

As the name says, Grub-Customizer is a graphical application to configure the Grub boot-loader, such as set default boot entry, edit boot menu, and add kernel parameters.

The app was available in Ubuntu system repositories, which was however removed since Ubuntu 22.04 due to broken logic issue (already fixed).

For all current Ubuntu releases, we usually install Grub Customizer through the developer’s PPA by opening terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands below one by one:

• Add the developer’s PPA repository:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer

• Refresh system cache:

  sudo apt update

• Finally install the software package:

  sudo apt install grub-customizer

For Ubuntu 25.04, the PPA package so far does NOT install due to that the old policykit-1 dependency package has been remove from system repository.

I’ve reported the issue. If you can’t wait for the fix, try:

• either unpack the PPA package (.deb) and rebuild with updated dependency library.
• or use the Grub-Customizer package from Debian repository.

Option 1: Unpack the package & rebuild with updated dependency

First, click the link to go to the PPA packages page. Click expand the package source for Plucky (Ubuntu 25.04 code-name) series, then select download the “grub-customizer_5.2.5-0ubuntu1~ppa1p_amd64.deb” package.

After downloaded the package, open Downloads folder, then right-click on blank area and select “Open in Terminal” to open that folder in terminal as working directory.

Next, run command to unpack the .deb package you just downloaded into tmp sub-folder:

dpkg-deb -R ./grub-customizer_5.2.5-0ubuntu1~ppa1p_amd64.deb ./tmp

Then, navigate into the tmp folder and DEBIAN sub-folder. Finally, click edit the control file, and replace policykit-1 with pkexec.

After edited that file, save it, and run the command below in the previous terminal window, to repack the tmp folder into grub-customizer-fixed.deb:

dpkg-deb -b --root-owner-group ./tmp grub-customizer-fixed.deb

Finally, click open the new grub-customizer-fixed.deb package with App Center and install!

Option 2: Install Grub Customizer package from Debian repository

Unlike Ubuntu, the upstream Debian includes Grub-Customizer package into all current releases.

Ubuntu 25.04 user may select download the package for Debian Trixie (Debian 13 Dev), via the link below:

Grub-Customizer for Debian Trixie

Tip: The Debian package supports multiple architecture types, including amd64, arm64, armhf, i386, and more. In the link page, scroll down and click the architecture type for your Ubuntu, then click a mirror link to download.

For amd64 (Intel/AMD CPUs), you may run the command below instead to download:

cd ~/Downloads && wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/grub-customizer/grub-customizer_5.2.5-1_amd64.deb

After downloaded the .deb package, click open with App Center, then install and enjoy!