How to Install and Use GNOME Tweak Tool on Ubuntu

Last Updated : 02 Jun, 2022

The Gnome Tweak Tool is software that allows us to change the general appearance and behavior of components in the Gnome Desktop Environment. Simply put, Gnome Tweaks allows us to change the look and feel of your entire Ubuntu system.

GNOME Tweaks gives us greater control over our GUI than the default GNOME settings do. Fonts, title bar clicking actions, workspace settings, and much more will be editable.

Installation of GNOME Tweak Tool on Ubuntu

Step 1: Open the Terminal.

This can be accomplished by utilizing the program menu or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + T.

Step 2: Update your System.

Sudo apt update

This guarantees that all system packages, including the core operating system, the kernel, and applications installed via apt or software center, are up to date.

Step 3: Confirm that the universe repository is enabled on your system. We can easily accomplish this with the following command.

sudo add-apt-repository universe

If our output is as looked like the same as shown in the above screenshot then the universe library is installed successfully on our system.

Step 4: We can now go ahead and install the Gnome Tweak Tool. On the terminal, run the following command.

 sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool

Step 5: After the installation process we are now able to launch the GNOME Tweak Tool from Application Menu as shown in the screenshot below.

We can also launch the GNOME Tweak Tool through Terminal Using the Following Command.

gnome-tweaks

GNOME Tweak Tool looks like this as shown below:

How to use GNOME Tweak Tool

Appearance:

In Ubuntu, we may install new themes in a variety of methods. However, we’ll need to install the GNOME Tweaks utility if we wish to switch to the freshly installed theme. The theme and icon options may be found in the Appearance section. We may choose from a variety of themes and icons and customize them to your liking. The adjustments go into effect right away.

Extension:

These are minor ‘plugins’ for your desktop that expand the GNOME desktop’s functionality. We may use a variety of GNOME extensions to display CPU use in the top panel, see clipboard history, and so on. We’ve published a detailed article on how to install and use GNOME extensions. We will be going to presume we’re already using them, in which case we can control them via GNOME Tweaks.

Fonts:

Tweaks may be used to install new fonts and make system-wide font changes in Ubuntu. We may also modify the scale factor if you think the icons and text on your desktop are too tiny.

Keyboards & Mouse:

We may also deactivate the touchpad while typing with GNOME Tweaks. This is beneficial if we use a laptop and type quickly. When the bottom of your hand touches the touchpad, the pointer slides away from where we want it on the screen.

This issue is resolved by automatically deactivating the touchpad when typing.

Startup Applications:

From this panel, we can change the Startup Applications.

Top Bar:

A few key items are displayed on the top panel of your desktop. The calendar, network icon, system settings, and activities option are all available.

We may also show the % of the battery, add a date with the day and hour, and show week numbers. We may also activate hot corners, which will display the activities view with all active programs if we move your mouse to the top left corner of the screen.

When the mouse is focused on an application window, the menu for that window appears in the top panel. If we don’t like it, just turn it off, and the application menu will appear on the program itself.

Windows Tilebars:

In these options, we can change the “Double-Click, Middle-Click, Secondary-Click” options.

Windows:

We may choose whether or not the maximum and minimize buttons (located in the upper right corner) are shown in the program window. We may also switch their positions from left to right.