Change GDM time format and lockscreen background

[leebickmtu]

Thought I would share this since I've seen it asked about before without a clear answer and took me awhile to figure out.

On Gnome 3 to change the GDM screen time format issue the following command with either 12h or 24h to switch time formats.

sudo -u gdm dbus-launch dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/interface/clock-format "\"12h\""

And issue this command to change the GDM lock screen background. Use any .jpg image but make sure it is in a directory to which GDM will have access. /usr/share/backgrounds is a safe bet.

sudo -u gdm dbus-launch dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/background/picture-uri "\"file:///usr/share/backgrounds/gnome/Stripes.jpg\""

[loleary]

Thanks for this. The only issue I had with this is that it is for the gdm user only. In my case I wanted this to be applied system wide -- to the login screen and all users by defauolt. To do this I did the following:

cat >> /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.gnome.desktop.interface.gschema.override << EOF
[org.gnome.desktop.interface]
clock-format='12h'
EOF
glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas

This changes the default for the clock-format from 24h to 12h system wide. If a user explicitly has set it to something different, their settings will override this but for those who haven't set it, such as in the case of the gdm user, this takes care of you.

It important to understand the two different methods. The method described by leebickmtu works for explicitly setting the value for an individual user -- gdm in the case of the login screen -- while the method I describe changes the default value that will be applied to a user in the event they haven't explicitly defined a value.

[leebickmtu]

This changes the default for the clock-format from 24h to 12h system wide.

loleary, this is actually what I really wanted to do. I just wasn't sure how to get it to work. So thanks for posting. I'm not at my computer right now to try it, but I'm sure it will work. Thanks