# Gorgeous-GRUB: a curated index of community GRUB themes > Gorgeous-GRUB is not a theme and not an installer. It is a README that points at community-made GRUB themes, plus a separate installation guide and a contribution guide. The value is the curation; the cost is that every theme has its own install path. **Jacksaur/Gorgeous-GRUB** — Collection of decent Community-made GRUB themes. Contributions welcome! - Repository: https://github.com/Jacksaur/Gorgeous-GRUB - Stars: 5,987 · Forks: 112 - Language: Unknown - License: not declared - Published: 2026-09-22 · Updated: 2026-09-22 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/jacksaur-gorgeous-grub ## What Gorgeous-GRUB actually is: a curated list, not a theme The problem the README names is discovery. Community GRUB themes exist in quantity, but they sit on multiple sites, and the README states that most themes on Pling, described there as the largest host of GRUB themes, are fairly low effort and boring to trawl through. Gorgeous-GRUB answers that with a curated page: a grid of screenshots, each captioned with the theme name and a link to where it lives. Some links point at GitHub repositories, some at Pling pages, and at least one at a Dropbox folder holding an improved font. The audience is narrow and specific. This is for someone running Linux with GRUB as the bootloader who has decided the default menu is worth changing. It is not for someone who wants a theme authored by the project, because the project authors none. The repository's top level holds Contributing.md, Installation.md, README.md and an Images directory. There is no theme source tree, no build script and no package. That distinction matters more than it sounds. When you adopt a theme from this list, you are adopting a third party's files, and the index is a pointer, not a warranty. The README asks readers who like a theme to rate it on Pling or star its repository, and notes that ratings on Pling are rare, which it gives as half the reason good themes are hard to find. ## How the index is organised and what the screenshots tell you The README is a three-column table of image cells. Each cell pairs a screenshot from the Images directory with a bold link to the theme. Names in the list include Minegrub, Descent, SteamOS (Personalized), Virtuaverse, YoRHa, CRT-Amber, DedSec, Sekiro, HyperFluent, Persona 5 Royal, Wuthering Waves, Grubphemous, Hollow Grub, Space Isolation, Framework, Sayonara, ULTRAKILL, Crossgrub, Arcade, DOOM, OldBIOS, Neumorphic, Graphite, Linux Mind, Fallout, Lobotomy GRUB, Dark Matter, CelesteGRUB, Elegant and several Cyberpunk variants. The screenshots are static PNG files for some entries and GIF files for others. That is a real signal, not decoration: a GIF shows the theme's menu animation, while a PNG shows one frame. For themes whose appeal is motion, the GIF is the only preview the index gives you before you install. Some entries are marked as sets, meaning the theme ships multiple variants, and a few are annotated with a combined version, which the README links separately. The Minegrub entries, for example, link both the theme and a double-minegrub-menu repository that combines two of them. Nothing in the README explains how a combined version is assembled; that detail lives in the linked repository. One warning sits above the table rather than inside it: on systems set up with Secure Boot, custom fonts can fail to apply or not display at all. The README points to an Arch Linux forum post describing how to sign font files so they display again. If your machine boots with Secure Boot enabled, read that before you pick a theme, because font rendering is where a themed GRUB most visibly breaks. ## Installing a theme from Gorgeous-GRUB The repository does not carry installation steps in the README itself. It links to Installation.md, a separate file in the repository root, and that is where the procedure lives. Because the themes are hosted elsewhere, the index cannot give one command that works for all of them; the linked theme's own repository or Pling page is the authority on its files. The README does name a community-made installer as an alternative route. FLEXIY0's gorgeous-grub-installer is described as a script that can automatically download and install a large amount of themes, with the caveat that it may encounter errors on some edge-cases. The README gives no invocation for it, so treat the script's own repository as the source for how to run it. A second useful link is hartwork's grub2-theme-preview, which the README describes as software to preview GRUB themes without rebooting. It notes that this requires a lot of dependencies because it spins up a whole VM, and points to the GRUB-Tweaks repository for a command that installs them all. If you want to see a theme before touching your bootloader, that is the safer path, and the dependency install command is documented in GRUB-Tweaks rather than here. For pulling a single theme folder out of a GitHub repository without cloning everything, the README recommends GitZip, noting that it asks for a token but appears to work without one. That is the README's own hedge, not a guarantee. The README does not print an install command, and no other repository file available here does either, so the procedure is whatever Installation.md and the linked theme's page say. Read Installation.md before you copy anything into your boot partition: the correct theme directory and the correct configuration regeneration step are distribution-specific, and guessing them can leave you with a menu that no longer renders. ## Where this approach breaks down The central limitation is that the index has no control over what it links to. A theme can be abandoned, its repository deleted, or its Pling page removed, and the README will still point there until someone edits it. The README itself is candid about the quality problem on Pling, which is the same problem in a different form: curation reduces the noise but does not remove the risk of a dead link. No licence is stated for the index itself, and the licence of no linked theme is reproduced. If you intend to redistribute a theme, or ship it in a distribution image, you have to check the linked repository or Pling page yourself. The index gives you no help there. Secure Boot is the sharpest failure mode the README documents, and it is not cosmetic in the sense of being harmless: fonts that fail to apply change what the menu looks like, and the fix involves signing font files, which is a separate workflow the index only links to. The community installer is described with an explicit caveat about edge-case errors. That is a second-hand claim in the README, and it is the kind of caveat worth taking at face value: an automated installer that pulls from many third-party sources will hit repositories with unusual layouts. Finally, this is the wrong tool if you want to understand how GRUB theming works. The README says the available theme tutorial and reference are pretty complex, and suggests starting from an existing theme and editing it rather than building from scratch. That is honest advice, but it means the index teaches you nothing about the theme format itself. ## Previewing and cycling themes: the adjacent tools worth knowing Two of the linked tools change the workflow rather than the look. The first is grub2-theme-preview, which the README recommends for previewing a theme without rebooting. The trade-off is stated plainly: it needs many dependencies because it runs a virtual machine. If your machine is already loaded with virtualisation packages, the cost is low; if not, you are installing a VM stack to look at a boot menu. The second is the author's own GRUB-Background-Cycler, described as a script that cycles a theme between different backgrounds each time the system reboots. That is a different kind of customisation from swapping themes: the theme stays, the wallpaper rotates. It only makes sense for themes whose layout tolerates a changing background, which is a design property of the theme, not something the cycler can enforce. A third link, GRUB-Tweaks, is a collection of guides for customising or repairing a GRUB install. The README points to it twice, once for general tweaks and once specifically for the dependency install command needed by the preview tool. If you hit a broken menu after installing a theme, that repository is the repair path the index offers. The pattern across all three is that Gorgeous-GRUB outsources every operation except discovery. Previewing, installing, cycling and repairing each live in a different repository. That keeps the index maintainable, but it means a new user follows four separate sets of instructions to go from a screenshot to a working themed boot menu. ## How it compares with Pling and with a single theme repository Pling is the alternative the README defines itself against. It is a hosting platform: anyone can upload a theme, and browsing is driven by upload volume and ratings. Gorgeous-GRUB is an editorial layer on top of that model. It hosts nothing, and it shows you a shortlist with screenshots. The difference in practice is that Pling gives you breadth and search, while Gorgeous-GRUB gives you a smaller set that someone decided was worth showing. Neither verifies that a theme works on your distribution. A single theme repository, such as Elegant or YoRHa, is the other comparison point. That model gives you one theme, its own documentation, its own issue tracker and its own release cadence. Gorgeous-GRUB gives you many themes and no support for any of them. If you already know which theme you want, the theme's own repository is the better place to be: it is where bugs get filed and fixed. The index is most useful before you have made that choice. The community installer sits between the two. It behaves like a package manager for a curated set, pulling themes automatically. The README's warning about edge-case errors is the honest counterweight: automation across many third-party sources is convenient until a source changes shape. ## Maintenance, contributions and what the repository asks of you The last push to the repository was on 2026-08-24, which is recent enough that the index is being edited rather than frozen, and the repository is not archived. There are no releases, which fits a project whose deliverable is a README and a folder of screenshots: there is nothing to version. Contributions are invited, and the README links to Contributing.md for the process. What that process requires is not described in the README, so anyone wanting to add a theme should read that file rather than assume the format from the table. The table's structure, image cells with bold links, is visible in the README, but the acceptance criteria are not stated there. The upgrade cost of adopting a theme from this list is not a version bump. It is the cost of re-checking the theme after a distribution upgrade that regenerates the GRUB configuration, and the cost of re-signing fonts if Secure Boot is in play. GRUB configuration is regenerated by the system, not by the theme, so a theme that survives one upgrade can still break on the next if the theme's files move or the configuration path changes. On licensing, no licence is stated for Gorgeous-GRUB, and no licence is stated for any linked theme. That is a gap you have to close yourself before redistributing anything from the list. ## Conclusion Gorgeous-GRUB suits Linux users who want a themed GRUB boot menu and would rather pick from a shortlist than trawl Pling, and it suits anyone who wants to preview a theme before committing. It does not suit anyone expecting a single install command across all themes, or anyone who needs the project to vouch for a theme's licence, maintenance or safety: the README links out, and the linked repositories carry their own terms. Before installing anything, open Installation.md, check whether your system uses Secure Boot, and read the linked theme repository's own instructions, because the index does not reproduce them. ## FAQ ### What does GRUB stand for? The README does not expand the acronym. It uses GRUB throughout as the name of the bootloader whose menu these themes change, and links to guides about configuring it. ### How do I make GRUB look nice with Gorgeous-GRUB? Pick a theme from the README's table, then follow the steps in Installation.md, which is a separate file in the repository root. Because the themes are hosted on GitHub, Pling and elsewhere, the linked theme's own page is the authority on its files. ### Is GRUB still used today? The repository is built entirely around GRUB themes, and its topics include grub, grub2, dualboot and linux. It does not discuss whether GRUB is still in use beyond the fact that it is the bootloader these themes target. ### How do I use GRUB themes from Gorgeous-GRUB? Download the theme's files from the link in the README's table, then install them following Installation.md and the theme's own instructions. The README also points to grub2-theme-preview for previewing a theme without rebooting. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/Jacksaur/Gorgeous-GRUB/issues) - [Jacksaur/Gorgeous-GRUB on GitHub](https://github.com/Jacksaur/Gorgeous-GRUB) - [README](https://github.com/Jacksaur/Gorgeous-GRUB/blob/main/README.md) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/jacksaur-gorgeous-grub