It’s certainly annoying when you leave your Mint desktop idle for a couple of minutes only to be welcomed by a login screen asking you to enter your password again. What if you’re the only one using the computer and don’t want to type your lengthy and secure password every time you want to log in?
Luckily, Linux Mint offers an easy, graphical way to enable or disable automatic login. We’ll show you how.
Enabling Auto-Login on Linux Mint
At the time of installation, Linux Mint prompts you with the choice of logging in automatically or having to type in the password to sign in to your desktop. But if, for some reason, you selected the wrong option, or have decided to change your mind and want to enable automatic login on your Mint desktop, here’s how to do it.
Open the applications menu by pressing Super or by clicking on the Linux Mint logo in the bottom-left corner. Then, search for “Login Window” and press Enter to open the settings window.
You might have to specify your administrator password since making changes to the login settings requires the system to modify configuration files.
Once launched, switch to the Users tab and type in your username (all lowercase) next to the Username label under the Automatic Login section. If you don’t know your username, you can either open the Users and Groups settings to check your username or list all active users on your system and find yours among the list.
There’s an additional configuration that commands the display manager to wait for a specified amount of time before triggering auto-login. If you want to add a delay, enter the time in seconds in the field next to the Delay before connection (in seconds) label.
Enable Auto-Login Using lightdm.conf
If you like to make configurations manually by editing text files, you can achieve similar results by editing the LightDM configuration file stored at /etc/lightdm.
To begin, open the lightdm.conf file using any text editor of your choice.
sudo vim /etc/lightdm/lightdm.confThen, add or edit the following line to enable auto-login, substituting “username” with your actual username:
autologin-user=username
autologin-user-timeout=0Feel free to modify the autologin-user-timeout value if you prefer delaying your desktop login.
Save the changes and restart your computer.
When you reboot the machine, you’ll be directly taken to your Linux Mint desktop without any interference from the display manager, which is the software responsible for login and authentication.
How to Disable Automatic Login on Linux Mint
Password-based login proves to be essential if multiple people share a computer. It adds an extra layer of security to your desktop and helps you keep your private files and settings secure. Therefore, if you’ve auto-login set up and want to remove this setting, follow the steps below:
- Open the Login Window settings window by searching for it in the applications window.
- Click Users and remove the username entered next to the Username label.
- Also, remove any numerical value specified in the Delay before connection option.
Finally, restart your computer to save the changes.
Alternatively, you can remove the autologin-user=username line from the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf file if you prefer to keep things complicated.
Customizing the Linux Mint Desktop
Enabling auto-login on a Linux Mint desktop is as simple as entering your username in a text field. Linux Mint offers a myriad of similar easy configurations to personalize your desktop.
Linux Mint Cinnamon is the flagship variant of the distribution and resembles the Windows desktop in both interface and window layouts. The only difference? Unlike the Windows desktop, you can customize Cinnamon to your heart’s content.