Make your Gnome Terminal Background (mostly)Transparent on Ubuntu

The Gnome terminal window has the built in ability to show a transparent background. It’s not true transparency, as it simply shows through the background picture, but it’s close enough.

Open up a terminal window, and go to the Edit \ Current Profile menu:

Click on the Effects tab, and then check the Transparent background radio button. The slider will let you control how transparent the background is. All the way to the left is fully transparent.

I left it a little bit shaded, here’s what it looks like over the default Ubuntu background:

This trick is most useful when you have a very dark or very light background.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 12/10/06 and tagged with: Ubuntu, Ubuntu Tips & Tweaks

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Comments (8)

1. March 12, 2008 5:52 pm
   Joe

   Thanks Dude I have been looking for a way change the the fonts and the background of the terminal, It was very nice guide

2. August 10, 2008 9:01 pm
   Brett

   Awesome, did exactly what I wanted! Thanks for sharing with the world.

3. September 9, 2008 10:21 am
   Matthew

   Thanks!

4. October 3, 2008 2:47 am
   barry

   Thank you – nice and simple – screen shots are great help.

5. October 7, 2008 6:02 pm
   LinuxCrayon

   I’m assuming this is for a version of Ubuntu

6. January 28, 2009 1:49 pm
   Eduardo

   If you want ANY window to be transparent you can use an even easier trick on Ubuntu.
   Hold down your Alt key and use your mouse scroll wheel and you can gradually change the transparency of any window selected. I don’t know if this only because I have ATI drivers and settings but it works for me.

7. March 2, 2009 11:24 am
   Nishant

   But wait…
   In my computer, what happens when I do the above settings is that the terminal becomes completely transparent. So, that means if I open a window also, the terminal will now show not the background picture, but this openend window as background.
   How do I resolve this?
   I want only the desktop background picture as the background of my terminal at all times.

8. March 2, 2009 11:25 am
   Nishant

   But wait…
   In my computer, what happens when I do the above settings is that the terminal becomes completely transparent. So, that means if I open a window also, the terminal will now show not the background picture, but this openend window as background.
   How do I resolve this?
   I want only the desktop background picture as the background of my terminal at all times…