Change your Desktop Background

Personalizing your computer can really make a huge difference in how you use your computer. In just a few short steps, you can completely change the look and feel of your computer, and really make it your own. The first thing we’ll want to change is a big one: your background.

There’s nothing wrong with the default background that comes with Linux Mint, but choosing your own picture takes your computer to another level. To change our background, we’re first going to navigate to our menu in the bottom left corner.

By using our left mouse button to click on the little Linux Mint logo, we’ll get access to the menu, and from there we’re going to click in the search bar and type “system settings”

Then, on the right side, we should see this “system settings” program appear. We’re going to click on it, again by using our left mouse button, and that will bring us to our System Settings window. We’ll check out some of the other options later, but for now, we’ll be clicking on the Backgrounds option at the top of the window.

Here we have several different options for our background!

These are cool in their own right, but let’s say that we didn’t want to have the Linux Mint logo in our computer’s background - what other options are there? Well, if we look at the left side of the Systems Settings Window, we’ll see our Navigation Panel.

You can think of the options here like folders you might find on your desktop or in your Home Directory. If we pick one of these folders, like Ulyana, we’ll see a ton of great photos that will work great as a desktop background!

We’ll see cool landscape photos like a Tree, or of Kyoto, but we’ll also find more modern designs like Pink or the Petersen Museum. There’s more, though!

If we scroll down, either by using our mouse wheel or by clicking and dragging the bar on the right side downwards, we’ll find another great selection of images. And this is all just in the Ulyana folder!

If we choose the Ulyssa folder, we’ll find even more photos like Roscoff or Sydney. And if we scroll down we’ll find more cool designs like the aptly named “Sport”.

Yep. Sport. It might not get any naming awards, but it is a cool background, for sure.

Now we also have this folder in our Navigation Panel called Pictures, so let’s take a look at that. Huh. It’s empty.

Well, that’s because this folder is our actual “Pictures” Folder where we can add our own photos to! So let’s check that out.

First we’re going to close our System Settings by clicking on the little “Close” icon in the top right corner of the window.

Next, we’ll double-click on the Home Directory on our desktop and then double-click on the Pictures Folder.

Well, just like we saw in the System Settings, our Pictures folder doesn’t contain any pictures, yet. If you like to take pictures on your phone or with a camera, you can easily add them to this folder by dragging and dropping them into this folder. Then, they’ll automatically show up in our System Settings when we go to change the background. However, there’s another way to add pictures, and that’s by downloading them from the internet!

First, we’ll minimize this window by clicking the little dash icon in the top right, and then we’ll open Firefox. We can get to Firefox with this orange icon on our panel, or by opening the menu, navigating to the Internet Category, and clicking on Firefox Web Browser.

To find a picture, I can click in the address bar at the top, and we’ll see the address to this website being highlighted. Now I can type in the thing that I want to search for, and press enter to search for it. I live in Oregon, so let’s say I wanted to find a picture of Mt Hood.

I’ll type that in, press the enter key on my keyboard, and my default search engine will find me information about Mt. Hood. My default search engine is DuckDuckGo, and if you want to learn how to change your default search engine, as well as why you might want to, please check out our article on making Firefox more secure.

Now I’m looking for a picture to save as my background, so I’ll click on Images, so see what DuckDuckGo finds for me. And here we’ll find a large number of pictures to choose from!

Just as a general rule, I’m only going to look at pictures that are at least 1920x1080. Anything smaller than that can look a little strange when set as my background, but anything at least 1920x1080 should work just fine.

If we click on it, we’ll get a slightly bigger version that we can click on again to see the full-size version. Now I’m going to right-click on this image and click Save Image As.

Then I’ll get a save window, where I can choose where I want my picture to be saved. On the left side, I can choose a directory, and would you look at that! The Pictures directory is already here! I’m going to click Pictures to choose to save this image there, and then click save in the bottom right corner.

Now if I open my Pictures Directory from the panel, we should see the picture we just saved!

So now, I can go back to my Backgrounds system settings and choose the Pictures section from the navigation panel, where I will now find my picture of Mt Hood. All I have to do is click on the picture, and now Linux Mint has changed my background! Cool!

However, I could have skipped a couple of these steps and selected my background much faster. If we go back to our Pictures directory, I can right click on any image and choose Set as Wallpaper.

We can also change our background directly within Firefox. If we find a picture that we like, then just like with our Pictures Directory, I can right-click on this picture and I’ll have an option for Set Image as Desktop Background.

And after just a moment, I’ll get a little window where I can see what my wallpaper will look like.

I can change the position to get a different perspective on the image. And then, when I’m happy with the preview, I can click Set Desktop Background. And just like before, I have now changed my wallpaper! Alright, time to customize a couple of other things.

The easy way to access the settings that I’m about to show you is through the Welcome Screen. Now, you might have hidden this window, but it’s easy to get back. To do this, we’ll go to our menu, and in the search bar, we’ll type Welcome. Click on the Welcome Screen option to get the Welcome Window, and then we’ll click First Steps on the Navigation Panel.

Here, you’ll be able to choose what color you want your computer’s theme to be, like Blue, pink, yellow, or teal. When we do this, we’ll see our folders and highlight colors change.

I can also switch from light mode to dark mode by clicking this toggle switch. This might save my eyes from a blinding setup menu, but won’t do much for me when I open something bright white, like a website.

If I want, I can also change my panel layout from Modern to Traditional, which will give me a bit more information about what each of the icons on my panel are.

The other way of changing these settings is through our System Settings. If I go to my system settings again, I can then click Themes. Here I’ll be able to pick a few settings individually.

Meaning, I can change the style and look of my Icons, while leaving my control buttons teal. All I have to do is click on the Icons button, and choose which folder style works best for me.

This is also where I can find High Contrast settings for those who need or want it.

And that is how you can customize most of the look of Linux Mint to fit your own personal style. But that’s not all you can do.

If you want to learn how to customize your panel, please feel free to check out our next article dedicated to making this bar as useful and personalized as you want.