Changing the background wallpaper for the Grub menu

Reuben James (ruenoak)

v1.0 20th September 2025

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This document describes how to change the background wallpaper in the Grub menu. This tutorial is based on Xfce 4.20 on Xebian a (Debian blend).

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The Grub boot menu supports custom wallpaper backgrounds and themes.

Caution! This tutorial requires the editing of the grub configuration file, you should create a backup of the grub configuration file before editing.

In this tutorial we will use the nano text editor to edit the configuration files. nano is generally install with most GNU/Linux distributions.

First you will need an image to use for your Grub background, for this tutorial I will be using the Xebian wallpaper 16.9 ratio.

You can use any image you want just be mindful about the ratio and size of the image you choose.

Now we need to copy the image to the grub directory, navigate to the location where you have your image saved and open a terminal and type,

sudo cp image-name.png /boot/grub/

This will copy the image to the grub directory.

Any time you work on system files it is a good idea to create a backup Backup.

Now that we have a backup we can go ahead and edit the Grub configuration file. Open a terminal and type sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Look for a line that says,

GRUB_BACKGROUND=

If you don't see this line, add it with the image name you are using for the background as in the example below.

GRUB_BACKGROUND=xebian_169.png

Save out the grub configuration file and close nano (In nano type CTRL O CTRL X).

Now we need to update Grub.

In your terminal type sudo update-grub and press enter

If you see any errors, check you Grub configuration file.

Once update reboot and you should see your new background in the Grub menu.