Issues with changing lock screen photo

Hiya guys. So I just changed my login screen background via settings and when my PC turns on or if I manually log out it shows the custom image just fine. However if I automatically get signed out (such as closing my laptop lid and re opening it or my sleep settings) it shows the default breath dark background at the login screen.

Anyone know why this is happening?

Running later version of Manjaro and KDE.
Using a 3060 mobile with the open nvidia driver on Wayland if that makes a difference

Any help would be appreciated :))

try settings > login screen > apply plasma settings

also try X11 to see you get the same behavior

Hi!

Short version - go to System Settings > Screen Locking and click Configure Appearance here: :slight_smile:

Long version - What you’re seeing there is actually two different system components:

When you boot up your PC for the first time, or if you’ve logged out, then your user account isn’t actively signed in. The software that gets you logged in and starts a graphical session for your user, by default with most KDE installations, is SDDM.

SDDM gets its appearance settings from Plasma through System Settings > Colors & Themes > Login Screen (SDDM) - I’m guessing that’s what you’ve already changed?

Now, in the other case you described - your device goes to sleep and wakes up, or you’re away from it for a while - your user account is actually still logged in, but access to your graphical session is locked. The software that does that is part of KDE Plasma - specifically, KScreenLocker.

KScreenLocker gets its personalization settings via the location in the screenshot above.

Hope that helps,

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@Skyler_Wiltshire:

Hi and, welcome to the KDE Discuss forums.


Do you mean these settings?

Please be aware that, if you want to change this background, you’ll need the password of the user “root”.


  • BTW, I’m using X11 as my display server protocol.

@Skyler_Wiltshire:

Moving to the internals of changing the background used by the SDDM Login Screen –

  • Apart from the “Apply” button – bottom right – on the System Settings window –
    You need to check some things in ‘/usr/share/sddm/themes/’ –
 > pwd
/usr/share/sddm/themes
 > ls
breeze  breeze-openSUSE  elarun  maldives  maya
 >

I’m using the “Breeze for openSUSE” theme – in the appropriate “themes” subdirectory there should be something like this:

 > ls breeze-openSUSE/
Background.qml  default-logo.svg  faces               Login.qml  metadata.desktop  SessionButton.qml  theme.conf.user
components      _DQ_5024.JPG      KeyboardButton.qml  Main.qml   preview.png       theme.conf
 >

_DQ_5024.JPG’ is one of my photographs which which I now use (since today) as the background for my SDDM Login Screen – applied by the middle button in the “Breeze for openSUSE” icon in the System Settings window – I resized and trimmed the original photo to match the size of my Desktop monitor and then copied that file to ‘/usr/share/wallpapers/’ – probably unnecessary but at least it’s now in a system directory.

In the SDDM Themes directory, ‘theme.conf’ is what your distribution dropped into that directory –

  • theme.conf.user’ is what the KDE Plasma System Settings dropped into the directory after you have completed the System SettingsApply” button dialogue – it contains the modification you’ve made to the Login Screen –
 > cat breeze-openSUSE/theme.conf.user 
[General]
background=_DQ_5024.JPG
type=image
 >

Which then leads to a helpful feature –

  • If you remove the ‘theme.conf.user’ file and restart the Display Manager – SDDM in this case – the default Login Screen background will be displayed.

This was it. I had a feeling it was “2 different components” however I couldn’t find where it was :sweat_smile:

Many thanks :))

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