GDM Settings, the graphical configuration tool for GNOME Login Screen, updated recently with new toggle options!

As you know, GDM Settings is a free open-source Python written settings app for GNOME’s Login/Display Manager.

With it, you may change the login screen background image, set the fonts and themes, tweak top-bar colors, disable user list, show welcome message, and configure more about the login screen.

GNOME Login Screen with custom background

The latest of the app is so far at version 5.0 which was release one year ago. The development slows down however after that release.

In the past 12 months, only few features were added. One is the “Light Mode” toggle option under Appearance tab, which works for GNOME 48 and above.

It works by setting the org/gnome/desktop/interface/color-scheme key to ‘prefer-light‘ for GDM. Though, in vanilla Gnome both top-bar and menus are dark in either mode. And, I didn’t see anything goes light after enabled the option in my test in Ubuntu 25.10.

Another is a new Enable Fingerprint Authentication toggle option added to ‘Login Screen’ page. It can be useful when you want to use fingerprint authentication for your GNOME desktop environment except the login screen, as you know log-in without password will cause unlock keyring pop-up when launching Chrome etc application though it can be skipped.

And, the function is done by setting org/gnome/login-screen/enable-fingerprint-authentication key for GDM silently in the background.

Besides that, it also updated to GNOME 49 platform for the Flatpak package. For more about the development of GDM Settings, see the commits page.

Install GDM Settings

The changes mentioned above are still in development stage. Meaning you need to manually build it from source code.

NOTE: GDM Settings has the potential to break your login screen. Don’t use it on production machine!

For the 5.0 version, it’s available to install in most Linux Distributions through Flatpak package.

Just enable Flatpak support, then run the command below to install it:

flatpak install flathub io.github.realmazharhussain.GdmSettings

While, Fedora Workstation may simply search for and install it from GNOME Software, if you have 3rd party repository enabled.

GDM Settings flatpak package in Fedora GNOME Software

For choice, there’s also non-install AppImage available to download in the Github releases page under Assets section.

As both AppImage and Flatpak were built with most recent GNOME runtime, they may be NOT working good in old GNOME Desktops.

So, I built the app package into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, 25.04 and 25.10.

To add the PPA and install GDM Settings, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gdm-settings
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gdm-settings

Optionally, you may remove the PPA package and remove the PPA at any time by running commands:

sudo apt remove gdm-settings

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gdm-settings