Making Ubuntu MATE look like macOS

While I always liked the looks of macOS and Apple's hardware design, I shied away from their high price tags. Having used Linux since its early days, I also came to appreciate its openness and customization options. Taking the best of both worlds, I'm now using some Apple hardware (mouse, keyboard and monitor) with a Laptop using a customized Linux desktop. This page details how I set it up.


Install Virtual Machine

If you only want to try it first, use VirtualBox or the free (for personal use) VMware Workstation Player. Download Ubuntu MATE and use the ISO image to install it.

First Steps

Change MATE Appearance

In MATE Tweak (System > Settings > Appearance > MATE Tweak) change the Panel to Cupertino:



Making it look like macOS

Theme

Download Mojave-light.tar.xz from macOS Mojave McOS-themes on opendesktop.org. Unpack it into your local .themes folder (create it, if it doesn't exist yet):

mkdir ~/.themes
cd ~/.themes
tar xvJf ~/Downloads/Mojave-light.tar.xz

Apply it in the Appearance window:


Problem: Indicator Applet Complete Background

The background color if the indicator applet does not match the top bar:


Add the following lines to  ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css:

/* needed for transparent indicator applet */
.mate-panel-menu-bar menubar {
  background-color: transparent;
  background-image: none;
}

Log out and log back in again, and the background is correct:

Problem: Global Menu Font Weights and Colors

To fix the black and too light font in the global application menu, add the following lines to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css:

 /**************************
 * Font color and weights *
 **************************/
.mate-panel-menu-bar,
.mate-panel-menu-bar menuitem > label > accelerator {
  color: #382828;
  font-weight: 500;
}

menubar.-vala-panel-appmenu-bold > menuitem:first-child > label {
  font-weight: 800;
}

.mate-panel-menu-bar menuitem:hover > label,
.mate-panel-menu-bar menuitem:hover > label > accelerator {
  color: #FFFFFF;
}

.mate-panel-menu-bar menuitem:disabled > label,
.mate-panel-menu-bar menuitem:disabled > label > accelerator {
  color: rgba(54, 54, 54, 0.4);
}

Log out and log back in again, and the font color and weight is correct:

Icon Theme

Download the light icon theme from Mojave CT icon theme. Unpack it into your local .icons folder (create it, if it doesn't exist yet).

mkdir ~/.icons
cd ~/.icons
unzip ~/Downloads/light.tar.xz

Now, customize your current theme in Appearance:


and select the Mojave-CT-light icon set:



Cursor / Mouse Pointer

Download OSX-ElCap.tar.bz2 from OSX El Capitan. Unpack it into a temporary folder and move OSX-ElCap to your local .icons folder:

tar xvjf ~/Downloads/175749-OSX-ElCap.tar.bz2
mv OSX-ElCap/OSX-ElCap ~/.icons
rm -r OSX-ElCap

In the Appearance dialog, click Customize... to change the pointer in the Pointer tab:


Dock

The Mojave-light theme also contains a Plank theme. To use it, create the folder /usr/share/plank/themes/Mojave-light. From there, create a symbolic link to the theme definition file (dock.theme):

cd /usr/share/plank/themes
sudo mkdir Mojave-light
cd Mojave-light
sudo ln -s ../../themes/Mojave-light/plank/dock.theme .

Hold Ctrl and right-click the dock, choose Preferences, and select Mojave-light in the Theme drop-down:


Wallpaper

Just search for macos mojave wallpaper on your preferred search engine and download a picture you like. Use the Background tab in the Appearance dialog to set the background image.

Dynamic Wallpapers


Create a wallpaper folder inside your Pictures folder:

mkdir ~/Pictures/wallpaper/mojave-background

Find the link in this Github gist and download the image ZIP file. Unzip it into your newly created folder (and clean up):

cd ~/Pictures/wallpaper/mojave-background
unzip ~/Downloads/mojave_dynamic.zip
rm -r __MACOS

Put the XML contents from the gist into ~/Pictures/wallpapers/mojave-background/mojave.xml.

Choose the mojave.xml as your new background image in Control Center > Appearance. In the Background tab click the Add... button and change the file type to All files.

Fonts

Download the San Francisco Fonts from Github. Extract the files to a temporary folder and move the files to your local .fonts folder (create the folder, if it doesn't exist yet):

mkdir ~/.fonts
unzip ~/Downloads/SanFranciscoFont-master.zip
mv SanFranciscoFont-master/* ~/.fonts/
rm -r SanFranciscoFont-master

In the Appearance dialog, open the Fonts tab:


Choose San Franciso Display Medium for
  • Application font
  • Desktop font
  • Window title font
Choose Sans Regular as Document font.


Screensaver

Install an additional package to get the Flurry screensaver:

sudo apt-get install xscreensaver-gl-extra

Configure it via the Control Center:



Advanced Styling

Icons on Buttons and Menus

Remove the icons from the buttons and menus using gsettings:

gsettings set org.mate.interface buttons-have-icons false
gsettings set org.mate.interface menus-have-icons false

Note: Use org.gnome.desktop.interface in standard Gnome environments.

Firefox

Using the userChrome.css from Material Safari style for Firefox. This requires git (install it, if not yet done so using sudo apt install git). Go to your default profile and clone the repository:

cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/
git clone https://git.angry.im/PeterCxy/firefox-material-safari.git chrome

Restart Firefox and you're done:



Bootsplash

Download 170649-darwin.tar.gz from Darwin Plymouth. Run the following commands to install/activate it:

cd /usr/share/plymouth/themes/
sudo tar xvzf ~/Downloads/170649-darwin.tar.gz
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/darwin/darwin.plymouth 100
sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth

Modify /usr/share/plymouth/themes/darwin/darwin.plymouth and replace /lib/ with /usr/share/ in the [script] section:

[script]
ImageDir=/usr/share/plymouth/themes/darwin
ScriptFile=/usr/share/plymouth/themes/darwin/darwin.script

Choose the appropriate option, 1 in my case:

There are 3 choices for the alternative default.plymouth (providing /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth).

  Selection    Path                                                                           Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-mate-logo/ubuntu-mate-logo.plymouth           150       auto mode
  1            /usr/share/plymouth/themes/darwin/darwin.plymouth                               100       manual mode
  2            /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-mate-logo/ubuntu-mate-logo-scale-2.plymouth   149       manual mode
  3            /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-mate-logo/ubuntu-mate-logo.plymouth           150       manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 1
update-alternatives: using /usr/share/plymouth/themes/darwin/darwin.plymouth to provide /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth (default.plymouth) in manual mode

Update the boot loader:

sudo update-initramfs -u

Cross fingers and reboot!

Greeter

First, you need to install the webkit based greeter for lightdm (and the Xephyr X-server for testing):

sudo apt install lightdm-webkit-greeter xserver-xephyr

Download the ZIP file from Github, unpack it and move it to a proper location:

unzip Downloads/lightdm-webkit-theme-macos-master.zip
sudo mv lightdm-webkit-theme-macos-master /usr/share/lightdm-webkit/themes/macos

Edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf:

[SeatDefaults]
greeter-session=lightdm-webkit-greeter
allow-guest=false
webkit-theme = macos

Move your local theme from .themes to /usr/share/themes:

sudo mv ~/.themes/Mojave-light /usr/share/themes
chmod -R root:root /usr/share/themens/Mojave-light

Modify /etc/lightdm/lightdm-webkit-greeter.conf:

theme-name=Mojave-light
webkit-theme=macos

Test the configuration using the test-mode (press Ctrl-C to exit):

lightdm --test-mode



Reboot or restart lightdm to activate this (caution: restarting lightdm will immediately terminate your session).

sudo service lightdm restart

Greeter Cursor / Mouse Pointer


On the login screen, the default mouse pointer is still used. Move your cursor theme from your local .icons folder to /usr/share/icons:

sudo mv ~/.icons/OSX-ElCap /usr/share/icons

Add this to the alternatives and activate it:

 sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme x-cursor-theme /usr/share/icons/OSX-ElCap/index.theme 100
sudo update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme

Choose the new theme, 2 in my case:

There are 4 choices for the alternative x-cursor-theme (providing /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme).

  Selection    Path                                      Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/share/icons/mate/cursor.theme         100       auto mode
  1            /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursor.theme      90        manual mode
  2            /usr/share/icons/OSX-ElCap/index.theme     100       manual mode
  3            /usr/share/icons/mate-black/cursor.theme   30        manual mode
  4            /usr/share/icons/mate/cursor.theme         100       manual mode

Press <enter> to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 2
update-alternatives: using /usr/share/icons/OSX-ElCap/index.theme to provide /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme (x-cursor-theme) in manual mode

Related Topics

Kommentare

  1. MonkeyMouse4. Juli 2020 um 08:46

    .Workerd perfectly for me. Thanks!

    How can I replace that foot icon that opens the activies window (on the top bar) to the regular apple icon?

    AntwortenLöschen
  2. Leif9. Februar 2021 um 04:56

    I don't understand how to type the line in the terminal at the second and third step. I type "~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css", but it's always said that the directory couldn't be found. Anyone there who can help me and explain this?

    AntwortenLöschen
    Antworten
    1. aaaa17. August 2023 um 11:09

      2 years late but you can just create the directory and file, no harm will be done.

      Löschen

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