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William Wallace
Asked: 2018-04-08 20:09:09 +0800 CST

Why are my wallpaper settings, tile, zoom, center, scale, fill or span options no longer available?

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Up until a couple months ago, if I changed my wallpaper/background image, I could choose between tile, zoom, centre, scale, fill or span. These options no longer appear in GUI for changing the background image.
I am using Ubuntu 17.10.

wallpaper gnome-shell background

4 Answers

  1. These options are removed from the default GUI wallpaper settings (accessible from the Settings application) in the recent versions of GNOME 3 for some reason.

    As an alternative, you may use another GUI application called (GNOME) Tweaks to get those extra options. To install it first run

    sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

    Then launch Tweaks and go to the 'Appearance' section on Ubuntu 18.04 and later (or the 'Desktop' section on Ubuntu 17.10). You'll get options to adjust the background and lock screen images.

    enter image description here

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  2. On Ubuntu 18.04 and later, the settings can be found under Tweak's 'Appearance' tab (instead of 'Desktop').

    screenshot

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  3. You can use a terminal tool called gsettings.

    • gsettings list-schemas -- among others you will get,

      org.gnome.desktop.background : Option 1

      org.gnome.desktop.screensaver ( for lockscreen, just in case ) : Option 2

    • gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.desktop.background, must try!

      You will what different options are supported by the schemas with there default values, you'll get something like this,

      org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options 'zoom'

      now if you want to know what are the other values supported by the options, other than default, do, for example.,

    • gsettings range org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options

      And voilà:

      • 'none' (blank screen/ color black),
      • 'wallpaper',
      • 'centered',
      • 'scaled',
      • 'stretched',
      • 'zoom',
      • 'spanned'.
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  4. The work-around provided by @pomsky no longer works for Ubuntu 22.04. The wallpaper files using the Tweaks application have no effect any more and are overwritten by the default Background settings.

    You now have to use a combination of the two. First set the desired background file though the default Background settings. Next open the Tweaks application to set the adjustments like spanned, etc

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