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This article shows you what are the simple steps to make Ubuntu look like macOS, concise and easy to understand, which will definitely brighten your eyes. I hope you can learn something from the details of this article.

Customization is one of the main reasons why I use Linux. The road to customizing desktop Linux is endless. You can change icons, themes, fonts, terminals, add screen gadgets, indicators Mini Program, extensions, and so on.

We have introduced a lot of suggestions and techniques for customizing the desktop environment. In this article, I'll show you how to make Ubuntu look like macOS.

Many people use macOS because of its simple and elegant appearance. You may not agree with this, but it is still a popular point of view. Even some Linux distributions have a macOS-like look and feel.

A reader asked us to show how to make Ubuntu look like macOS, so we wrote this tutorial. In fact, this is a good example of the customization capabilities of desktop Linux.

However, you don't need to install a new distribution to customize the look. You can make some adjustments on your own system to give you a macOS-like look.

How to macOS your Ubuntu Linux

Although this article is a recommendation for Ubuntu, you can also use these suggestions in other distributions that use the GNOME desktop environment, almost without any changes. Please be sure to check your desktop environment.

To be honest, even if you are using another desktop environment, you can still get some tips on what changes to make. But you have to make sure that you use the tools of your desktop environment to follow the steps.

Necessary conditions: GNOME Tweaks and GNOME extensions

Be sure to install the GNOME Tweaks tool. You need it to change the theme and icon.

You also need to enable the GNOME extension to change GNOME Shell and add important points.

After you enable the GNOME extension, you need to install the user theme extension from the GNOME extension website, or just go to the hyperlink and click the switch to open it.

I also hope you have some knowledge of the installation theme on Ubuntu. However, I talked briefly about the subject.

Let's look at each step in turn.

Step 1: install a macOS-style GTK theme

Because the point is to make GNOME look like macOS, you should choose a theme like macOS. There are a lot of themes like macOS.

Download a theme of your choice

You can go to the Gnome-look site and search for topics about GTK3. If you see the words "Pling" on Gnome-look, don't worry, they all come from the same supplier.

You can choose any theme you want. Here are some macOS themes I think you should take a look at:

McOS 11

McHigh Sierra

Catalina

McMojave

In this article, I will use "McMojave". You can choose any theme you want. You will find the drop-down download button on the right side of the website and click it.

You can find various ".tar.xz" files here. These different files contain the same theme, but with some small differences. Like in McMojave, we have variants like dark themes and bright themes. You can try all the themes, or choose one you like at will.

Set the theme for download

Extract the downloaded themes and copy the extracted theme folders to the .local / share/themes folder.

Open the GNOME Tweak tool and change the theme of the application and Shell. As you change the theme, you can see the yellow, green and red buttons, as well as the apple logo in the upper left corner. You can also see some changes on the panel item.

Step 2: install icons like macOS

The next step in revamping macOS is to use icons like macOS.

Download icon collection

Here are some icons I recommend, which you can download from the Gnome-look website:

McMojave-circle

Mojave CT-icons

Cupertino icons

In this article, I will use "McMojave-circle", and you can use any icon you like.

Just like the theme, you can download the icon collection from the drop-down button on the right. You can also find different versions of the same icon here.

Set icon

Now set the icon for the download. To do this, extract the folder in the download file and copy it to the .icons folder in your home directory. Check out this article on the topic of installing icons in Ubuntu.

This is what this icon looks like:

Step 3: add a docking station similar to macOS

Without a docking station dock like macOS, your Ubuntu doesn't look like macOS. There are many docking stations available on the Linux. I like "Dash to Dock" and I will use it here.

"Dash to Dock" is an GNOME extension. By now, you are familiar with the GNOME extension. Just go to the hyperlink and click the toggle button to install it. Your original docking station will be automatically replaced by "Dash to Dock".

You can change the settings by right-clicking the "show applications" button (the rightmost menu button) and selecting "Dash to dock settings".

Step 4: use macOS wallpaper

Most of the complicated things have been done. Now it's time to set up the macOS wallpaper. You can download the macOS default wallpaper from the hyperlink below:

Download macOS wallpapers

Change the desktop background

I will use "Mojave Day" wallpaper. Right-click the downloaded image and select the set as wallpaper option to change the wallpaper.

After setting up this wallpaper, this is what my system looks like:

Change the lock screen wallpaper

The lock screen wallpaper option has been removed from the settings in Ubuntu 20.04. Now it uses a blurry desktop wallpaper as the lock screen wallpaper.

To set a custom lock screen wallpaper, you can use the "Lock screen background" extension.

Open the "Lock screen background" extension settings and set the lock screen wallpaper.

This is what the lock screen looks like now. If you're curious, here's how to take a screenshot of the lock screen in Ubuntu.

Step 5: change the system font

In recent years, the main system font of macOS is "San Francisco". However, this font is not in the public domain, but like many other things in the Apple ecosystem, it is a proprietary font. For this reason, you can't use this font.

All you can do is use an open source font that looks like a San Francisc font. I recommend using Google's Roboto font or Adobe's Source Sans Pro.

It is easy to install fonts in Ubuntu. To download the zip file for the font, just double-click the ttf file in the extracted folder. It will give you an option to install fonts one by one.

If you want to save time and install all the fonts at once, extract all the fonts into the .fonts directory in your home directory (~ / .fonts).

After you install the font, you can use the GNOME Tweaks tool to change the system font.

Extra hint: Spotlight-style application launcher (if you want to go further)

If you are a fan of macOS Spotlight launcher, you can find something similar on Linux. My favorite package for this type of initiator is "Albert".

You can find the installation instructions on the Albert website.

When the installation is complete, open Albert and set the shortcut key (you want to open the key combination of the initiator). I think the Command + Space key in macOS is to launch Spotlight;. In Ubuntu, you can set the Super+Space shortcut key.

You'll get a lot of built-in themes, and in the picture below, I use the "Spotlight dark" theme.

Albert cannot launch the application directly, you must grant it permission to search where it can be conducted.

After setting up, this is what it looks like:

This is what my Ubuntu 20.04 looks like after all the customizations have been made. Does it look like macOS? The benevolent see benevolence, the wise see wisdom.

So, this is how you make your GNOME desktop look like macOS. As I said at the beginning, this is a good example of Linux desktop customization.

What are the simple steps to make Ubuntu look like macOS? have you learned any knowledge or skills? If you want to learn more skills or enrich your knowledge reserve, you are welcome to follow the industry information channel.

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