The Mac OS interface can be replicated on Ubuntu, the terminal style, the icons and a whole lot more.So a little rundown of what this article covers:

Aug 23, 2018 sudo apt-get remove macbuntu-os-icons-v1804 macbuntu-os-ithemes-v1804 3: Slingscold (Alternative to Launchpad) To install Slingscold Launcher ( Launchpad ) in Ubuntu/Linux Mint open Terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy the following commands in the Terminal. Easy First, download the Ubuntu ISO image you want and prepare the bootable medium (optical disc, flash drive, external hard drive, etc.), if using an optical disc, make sure your Mac has an optical drive, if not, you will need the SuperDrive or o. This simple tutorial shows how to install ‘McMojave’, a Mac OS Mojave like theme, in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.10. Following steps will first download and install the GTK theme, icons theme, and a set of wallpapers. And then apply new themes and tweak the left dock to make your Ubuntu desktop look like Mac OS X.

• Getting the GNOME shell.
• Getting a Mac theme for GNOME shell.
• Getting a Mac OS desktop dock.
• Getting a Mac OS icon set.
• Choosing a Mac OS style system font.

Here is an ultimate picture of what you can be achieved as seen by Jason Spaceman on Flickr:

Now let‘s get started.

Getting the GNOME shell

One of the great advantages of using Ubuntu is the fact it there are enough desktop environments for everyone to choose from like Unity, Cinnamon etc. The desktop environments change the entire look of the software interface, gives it uniqueness and style.

The GNOME shell is one of the most popular desktop environments available out there. You can carryout basic functions such as launching applications, switching between windows and using a widget engine. All in all, the GNOME shell is pretty simple but very functional.

As simple as the GNOME shell may be, it supports theme customization and that‘s exactly what we are going to do as we would attempt turning this seemingly simple design into that of the Mac OS.

If you already have the GNOME shell and the GNOME Tweak Tool installed on your machine, you can skip the remaining part of this section.

The shell can be installed using the terminal command below:

During installation, a prompt may come up asking you to choose the display manager, simply choose the ‘lightdm‘ option.

The installation is complete now, however making customizations to the shell at this point could still be a pain in the neck.

For this reason, there is a tweak tool that allows for easy customization of the GNOME desktop environment, named the GNOME Tweak Tool.

You can install GNOME Tweak Tool using the terminal command below:

You shouldn‘t expect an instant change in the environment just yet. To access the new desktop environment, you should log out of the current desktop session or better still do a reboot.

Before logging in, you should click on the icon of the current desktop environment which would be found somewhere close to the password box. GNOME Desktop is the one you want to select.

Getting a Mac OS theme for GNOME shell:

Now that the GNOME desktop environment has been installed, getting a suitable Mac OS theme is next on the agenda.

There are lots of themes out there however, the theme of our choice is the GNOME OS X II GTK theme. This may not be a perfect replica of the Mac OS X, however it is one of the best.

This theme requires ubuntu 16.10 and above. If you use a version below there is an alternative which is the macOS Sierra GTK theme, it exists on github so you would have to clone the project.

To install the theme, simply extract the theme folder into the ~/.themes folder. This folder exists in the home directory, if you can‘t find it you should select the option to show hidden files.

After extracting the theme into that folder, open the GNOME Tweak Tool then select the Appearance section. There you would find the theme, and select it.

Now you should get a feel of the Mac OS, however the icons do not yet look the Mac. Keep calm, that would be tackled soon.

Getting a Mac OS desktop dock

Desktop docks always bring a different sort of flavour to any desktop environment. A dock such as the default Ubuntu desktop dock has gained lots of popularity as much as the Mac OS desktop dock.

To replicate this, we would be using the Plank desktop dock. This is because it is lightweight and comes close to giving the needed Mac OS dock look.

It can be installed using the terminal command below:

Let‘s give the icons a touch of the Mac OS.

Ubuntu Mac Os Download

Getting a Mac OS icon set

One of the most unique things about the Mac OS is its icon set. Its very simple but has a classic design and is one of the best icon sets you would ever find.

Luckily for us, we can easily install this using the La Captaine pack.

After download, you should extract the icons folder into the ~/.icons folder. This folder should be present at the home folder, if you can‘t find it then it is hidden you should set the file manager to display hidden files.

After extracting the files there, then from the GNOME tweak tools you can select the icon pack from the appearance section.

Choosing a Mac style system font

Font styles are of great importance in designs. They could be the subtle difference between very beautiful and not quite for any interface.

As with all Apple products, fonts are taken very seriously and this has ensured that the already beautiful design becomes much more classy.

You can easily get the Apple font styles by running the following command on the terminal.

Icon Mac Os For Ubuntu Usb

Now go to the GNOME tweak tool and select The Garuda Regular which is the standard font style of the Mac OS.

Conclusion

More can be done to make Ubuntu more Mac-like, such as changing the icons in LibreOffice, installing a Launchpad etc. Now you can show off your Mac OS interface to your friends.

Do you want to make Ubuntu look like Mac OS X? If so, we’re going to show you how to do it, step-by-step.

The whole point of using Linux is that you can do things like this

It doesn’t matter whether you have a bad case of Apple envy, or you simply appreciate the design aesthetic of Apple’s OS; there’s nothing wrong with aping the appearance of a rival operating system.

After all, the whole point of using Linux is that you are free to do things like this — and hey: you certainly can’t make macOS look like Ubuntu!

How To Make Ubuntu Look like a Mac

A stack of mac GTK themes, icon sets, fonts and cursors are available for Linux, just a quick Google away.

The ones included below are the ones we use/think give you the best Mac-like look on your Linux box, But don’t be afraid to explore DeviantArt, GitHub and other avenues if our choices don’t quite match with your tastes.

1. Pick the Right Desktop Environment

GNOME Shell

To achieve the most Mac-like look on Linux you need to use the most appropriate desktop environment and that is GNOME Shell.

This is not a slight against other desktop environments (DEs) as Unity, Budgie, MATE and Cinnamon can all be moulded to resemble Cupertino’s computing OS too.

But GNOME Shell is the most customisable desktop environment. This is a key ask in a task like this. GNOME Shell lets you theme and re-arrange everything you need to with the least amount hackery or fuss.

If you’re using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or later you already have everything you need to get started, so skip ahead.

But if you don’t have GNOME Shell installed on Ubuntu you will need to install it first.

This is easy. Just click the button below and follow in the on-screen prompts (select ‘lightdm’ as the display manager when asked):

You’re also going to need to the GNOME Tweaks tool in a few steps time, so install that now too:

Once both installations are complete you need to logout and select the ‘GNOME Shell’ session from the Unity Greeter:

A word on using Unity

One thing GNOME Shell can’t offer, that the Unity desktop can, is global menu support.

Now, I don’t consider this to be a negative as more and more applications use use Client Side Decorations, making the need for a global menu redundant.

But if having an omnipresent set of app menus stripped across the top of the screen is part of the Mac experience you don’t wish to lose, stick with Unity.

2. Install a Mac GTK Theme

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

Our top recommendation is the ‘macOS Mojave’ theme by Vinceluice. This is a near-enough pixel-perfect clone of Apple’s OS skin, and is available in light and dark versions. It’s one of the best designed Mac GTK themes out there (it also has a matching GNOME Shell theme).

The ‘macOS Mojave’ theme requires GNOME 3.20 or later, so you’ll need to be running Ubuntu 16.10 or later to use it.

If you’re running the older Ubuntu 16.04 LTS release you can use the competent ‘macOS Sierra’ clone created by the B00merang project:

Tip: How To Install GTK Themes

Once you download your chosen macOS theme from the link(s) above, you will need to install it.

To install themes in Ubuntu first extract the contents of the archive you downloaded, then move the folder inside to the ~/.themes folder in your Home directory.

If you do not see this folder press Ctrl + H to reveal hidden folders. Next, find the .themes folder or create it if it doesn’t exist. Move the extract folder mentioned above to this folder.

Finally, to change theme, open GNOME Tweak Tool > Appearance and select your chosen theme (and the GNOME Shell theme, if you also downloaded one).

3. Install a Mac Icon Set

Next grab some a Mac Icon set for Linux. A quick Google will throw up a bunch of results. Most, sadly, aren’t complete enough to function as a full icon set, so you’ll also want to use (and in some cases manually specify) a fall back icon theme like Faba, or Papirus.

To avoid all of that hassle you may wish to use the fabulous ‘La Capitaine‘ icon pack.

What’s great about La Capitaine is that it’s a proper Linux icon set, with custom macOS inspired icons for many Linux apps and not just a direct port of mac icons to Linux. It’s also totally open-source, and is available to download from Github.

How to Install Icon Themes

Once you’ve downloaded your chosen theme from the link(s) above you need to install it. To do this first extract the contents of the archive you download, then move the folder inside to the ~/.icons folder in your Home directory.

If you don’t see this folder press Ctrl + H to view hidden folders. Next, find the .icons folder or create it if it doesn’t exist. Move the extract folder mentioned above to this folder.

Finally, to apply, open GNOME Tweak Tool > Appearance and select your chosen theme.

4. Change the System Font

If you’ve used Mac OS X / macOS at some point in the past few years you’ll know it has clean, crisp system typography.

‘Lucida Grande’ is the familiar Mac system font, though Apple uses a system font called ‘San Franciso’ in recent releases of macOS.

A quick Google should turn up plenty more information (and links to download San Francisco font) but be aware that neither font is not licensed for distribution — so we can’t link you to it, sorry!

Thankfully there’s an open-source alternative to ‘Lucida Grande’ called Garuda. It’s even pre-installed out of the box on Ubuntu, so you don’t need to go on a font safari to find it.

Head to GNOME Tweak Tool > Fonts and set the ‘Windows Titles’ and ‘Interface’ fonts to Garuda Regular (or any other font you wish).

If you use Unity you can use Unity Tweak Tool to change the font on Ubuntu.

5. Add a Desktop Dock

Ask people what a Mac desktop looks like and chances are they will mention its ubiqutious desktop dock. This is a combined application launcher and window switcher.

If you opted to use GNOME Shell back in Step 1 install the excellent Dash to Dock extension from the GNOME extensions site. This dock can be adjusted, tweaked and tune to look exactly like its macOS counterpart.

Dash to Dock doesn’t look very mac-ish by default so you will want to dive in to the GNOME Tweak Tool > Extensions > Dash to Dock > Appearance to change the colour to white, and lower the opacity.

Plank Dock

If you chose to stick with the Unity desktop you can set the Unity Launcher to hide (System Settings > Desktop > Behaviour) and install Plank, a desktop dock, to handle app launching and window switching:

Plank can be configured with all sorts of themes too, making it easy to replicate the Mac OS X experience. Gnosemite is a faithful mac Plank theme worth a look.

That’s it; we’ve achieved our aim to make Ubuntu look like a Mac — now it’s your turn.

We’d love to see a screenshot of your mac-inspired creation so do feel free to share one in the comments.