How to make ubuntu look like mac?

If you are using the Ubuntu operating system and are a little bored with the same old look, you can change it quite easily to the GNOME desktop environment. Probably the most beautiful and elegant system is the Mac OS, one of the reasons why many users choose it.

Index of contents

Convert Ubuntu to Mac in a few easy steps

Next, we are going to see how we can modify the appearance of Ubuntu so that it looks like a Mac, something that does not have much complication if you follow these steps.

1 - Choose the right desktop environment - GNOME Shell

The first thing we should do is choose the GNOME Shell desktop environment, which supports the use of advanced skins. Unity, MATE and Cinnamon also allow this type of customization, but they are more limited and are not compatible with the skin that we are going to use in this guide.

GNOME Shell allows you to organize and reorganize everything you need with the least amount of fuss, it is simpler and therefore better for this type of task.

If you don't have GNOME Shel l you will have to install it on your Linux machine. We will also need the Tweak tool for GNOME, so we are going to install it.

2 - Install Mac GTK Theme

The easiest way to make Ubuntu look like a Mac is to install Mac GTK Theme.

Our main recommendation is the GNOME OS X II GTK theme. It is not a pixel perfect clone of the Apple operating system, but it is one of the best themes designed for Mac GTK theme.

Please note that the GNOME OS X II theme requires GNOME 3.20 or later, so you need to run Ubuntu 16.10 or later to use it. We are going to download and install it.

How to install GTK themes

Once you have downloaded the chosen theme from the links above, you have to install it. To do this, first extract the downloaded content and move it to the ~ /.themes folder in your Home directory.

Finally, to apply it, open GNOME Tweak Tool> Appearance and select the chosen theme. Then your Mac theme running on Ubuntu will be active, wonderful.

3 - Install Mac icon set

Next, we're going to need to install the Mac custom icon set for the look to be complete.

The most recommended set of icons at the moment is La Capitaine, so we are going to download it from the following link.

La Capitaine is a set of Linux icons inspired by macOS customized for many Linux applications and not just a direct icon port from Mac to Linux. It is also totally open source.

Apply the icon set

Now we are going to apply the icons that we have downloaded to the system. The steps are quite similar to the theme. Unzip the downloaded content and extract it in the ~ /.icons folder in the Home directory.

We go to GNOME Tweak Tool> Appearance and select the icon set from the previous step.

WE RECOMMEND YOU find a major exploit in the macOS kernel

Change the font

We know that Mac uses the Lucida Grande font on their system and in recent macOS it has been decided to use the San Francisco font.

In Ubuntu there is already a very similar one that we can use, it is Garuda. To change to this font we are going to go to GNOME Tweak Tool> Fonts.

Add a Dock

Finally we have to add the classic Mac Dock, for them we will have to resort to an extension for GNOME Shell called Dash to Dock. We can do it using the following link.

You can go to GNOME Tweak Tool> Extensions> Dash to Dock> Appearance to modify the color and opacity of the Dock.

I hope it has been useful to you and see you next time.