betterlockscreen

Customizable lock screen using i3lock

TLDR

Lock screen

$ betterlockscreen -l

Set background image

$ betterlockscreen -u path/to/image.png

Lock with custom text

$ betterlockscreen -l pixel --text "Custom text"

Lock with monitor timeout

$ betterlockscreen --off 5 -l

betterlockscreen is a lock screen wrapper for i3lock-color that provides visually appealing lock screens with customizable background effects. It supports dim, blur, dimblur, and pixel effects applied to a wallpaper image.Before locking, the background image must be cached using the -u flag, which generates processed versions with each effect. This makes subsequent locks instant since the effects are pre-computed. The tool can also set the desktop wallpaper using the same cached images.

PARAMETERS

-l, --lock [effect]

Lock the screen (effects: dim, blur, dimblur, pixel)

-u, --update image

Cache the lock screen background image, pre-generating all effect variants

-t, --text text

Display custom text on the lock screen

--off seconds

Turn off monitor after specified seconds when locked

-w, --wall [effect]

Set desktop wallpaper using the cached image

--display n

Set the display number to draw the login box on (for multi-monitor setups)

--span

Scale the image to span across multiple displays

CONFIGURATION

~/.config/betterlockscreenrc

Configuration file for default effects, colors, font settings, and lock screen appearance.

CAVEATS

Requires i3lock-color and imagemagick. Background images are cached for faster locking. First-time setup requires running -u to generate cached images.

HISTORY

betterlockscreen was originally created by Pavan Jadhaw and is now maintained at the betterlockscreen GitHub organization. It is a Bash wrapper script that adds blur, dim, and pixel effects on top of i3lock-color.