After installing a new distribution in my computer, I usually want to make some tweaks to gnome. In this post I’m going to explain how to do these tweaks from the command line, so they can be scripted.
gsettings
Gsettings is a command-line tools that allows us to modify gnome settings. To modify a setting we can use the set command. The format is like the following:
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gsettings set SCHEMA[:PATH] KEY VALUE
This means, to modify a setting we need to know its schema and path. We can list all the schemas using:
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gsettings list-schemas
But it might still be hard to find the schema and path we need to modify. What I have found more effective is to google for the setting I’m interested in.
Keyboard shortcuts
One of the things I usually modify is keyboard shortcuts. The schema for modifying keyboard shortcuts is: org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys. To see which shorcuts are available by default we can use list-keys:
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gsettings list-keys org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys
To set the shortcut for openning the terminal, I used this command:
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gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys terminal "['<Ctrl><Alt>t']"
Hide dock
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gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock autohide false
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dock-fixed false
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock intellihide false
Show battery percentage
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gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface show-battery-percentage true
Conclusion
We can configure most things about gnome with gsettings, the only problem is finding which setting needs to be changed. So far, the best I have found is to use Google to find the correct setting.
linux automation bash