Tastes differ, but it’s clear that there are a lot of people who really like Zorin OS’s modern flat visual design language, myself included. Zorin OS, compared to many other Linux distributions, has a very simple, minimalist, and lightweight look. It is sometimes joked that the developers of Zorin OS never have the light on at night because the mainly white user interface is so light that you can illuminate your room with it. Zorin OS has out-of-the-box different visual themes that can be converted from, for example, a Windows-like environment to a macOS-like environment at the push of a button. But Zorin OS also offers a lot more fine grain customization options. So in this lesson let’s see how we can use the visual settings in Zorin OS to make it your own.
The Zorin OS Layouts
In this course I mainly focus on Zorin OS Core, because I expect most of you want to try this free version first before considering the Pro paid version in the future. Zorin OS Core offers out-of-the-box four standard desktop experiences, also called Zorin Layouts, namely Windows like, Windows List like, Touch and GNOME Shell like.
In my opinion the above layouts will please both former Windows users and macOS users, but if you want an even more similar Windows 11 or macOS experience, then you need Zorin OS Professional as it offers even more layouts. Zorin OS Professional offers eight desktop experiences out-of-the-box. In addition to the layouts already mentioned with Zorin OS Core Windows-like, Windows List like, Touch and GNOME Shell like, the extra macOS like, Windows 11 like, Windows Classic like and Ubuntu like are also offered here.
1) You can change the Layout by opening the Zorin OS main menu and search for “Appearance”.
2) Click on Zorin Appearance to open the following screen.
Here you can choose between the four earlier mentioned layouts. My preferred layout is Touch, but there is one for everyone’s taste.
Other Zorin Appearance settings
In the Zorin Appearance screen, next to Layout, you also find other sections: Theme, Interface, Desktop and Fonts.
Theme settings
In the Theme section you can choose between the Zorin OS themes and Other teams. For the Zorin theme you can change the accent color and the background.
The background has 3 options: light, dark and automatic. With the automatic option the switch between light and dark mode will be based on a manual schedule or an automatic Sunset to Sunrise schedule.
When you switch from Zorin theme to Other, you have options for Applications, Icons and Shell. In Applications you can switch between the Adwaita, Adwaita-dark, or the HighContrast theme. For Icons you can choose between HiColor and HighContrast. Shell can’t be changed in the standard settings.
Interface settings
In the Interface section you can move the Titlebar Buttons from Right to Left. You can enable or disable animations in interface components. You can enable or disable Jelly Mode, which makes moving windows a bit wobbly. The left super key (Windows key) can be changed between an activities overview or the Zorin menu. And Activities Overview Hot Corner can be enabled here to make the desktop corner react to your mouse position and open the activities overview.
Further you see Taskbar Settings. When you click here, a new screen will be opened with even more options to change your visual experience. More on that later.
Desktop settings
In this section you can choose to show icons on your desktop. If you enable this option, you can change the icon size (Tiny, Small, Standard, large), and if you want to show icons for Home, Trash, Mounted Volumes and Network Servers.
Fonts settings
In this section you can change the type and the size of different system fonts, like the interface text, the document text, monospace text and legacy window titles.
Zorin Taskbar Settings
Let’s go back to the Interface section in Zorin Appearance, and click on Taskbar Settings.
Here you see 4 tabs: Style, Position, Behavior and Action.
Style tab
In the Style section you can change the size of the Panel. When you increase the size, the icons on the panel will change in size accordingly.
With Panel Intellihide you can hide and reveal the panel according to some specific preferences.
Here you can make the panel floating with round corners, change the way the panel interacts when a window is touching it, if you require pressure at the edge of the screen to reveal the panel, allow the panel to be revealed while in fullscreen mode, how this interacts with a multi screen setup, and what keyboard shortcut you like to reveal and hold the panel.
When we switch back to the Style tab, we can override the panel theme background opacity.
Position tab
In the Position tab we have an enormous set of possible options to adapt the position of Panel components to our liking. First of all we can choose to show the panel on every monitor you have, or only on the main monitor. Further we can determine where we want to position the panel: Bottom, Top, Left or Right.
Then we come to the largest section, where we can make all kinds of changes to the positions of different panel components.
With “Left box” it seems you can change the position of the complete left icon area of the panel, but in reality you change the position of the Zorin main menu icon and the rest floats with it. For example, when you select Left box Centered, you get a more Windows 11 like look of your panel. When Left box Visible is disabled, the Zorin main menu icon disappears and the position will be automatically at the left side, which is for this layout the standard position.
With the Show Application button on Visible, you will see an extra icon (3 x 3 dots) on your panel, which gives you more of a grid view of all your applications, like in macOS, Android and iOS. And here you can do the same type of positioning like described above.
With the Activities button on Visible you can show or remove the activities icon, which is the 3rd icon from the left on the panel in the previous image. When you click on this icon you see the below screen, which is a kind of global overview of your open windows and the different available desktops.
When you enable visibility for the Taskbar option, all the application icons will appear on your panel. And here you can do the same type of positioning like described above. For example Taskbar on Visible and Monitor center gives you the following look and feel:
With Left box, Center box and Right Box, you can make all kind of combinations, like in the below example (Left box = Stacked to left, Center box = Stacked to right, Right box = Monitor to center):
With System menu you can make the system tray icons visible or not visible:
With the Date menu option you can do the same for the Date section. With the Date Menu options you can determine which date components you wnat to show:
With Desktop button Visible you can show the desktop button, which kind of minimizes or reopen all open application windows.
Behavior tab
In the Behavior tab you can show or not show favorite applications. The effect is that the apps you moved to the panel as your favorites will be visible or not. When not visible, you will only see the icons for the running applications. With Show running applications you can do the same for the applications you have currently active. Further you can decide here to show applications added as favorites on the secondary panels.
In the next section you can switch on preview on hover. In this case, when you hover over active application icons on your panel, you will see nice previews.
Show tooltip on hover makes sure you see a small description when you move your mouse indicator over your favorites icons.
With the Isolate workspaces option turned on, starting an application will create a new app instance in a new workspace. You can do the same for different monitors, which are actually physical workspaces.
With Ungroup applications, all icons are behaving on their own, so have impact on the earlier mentioned positioning of for example the different boxes.
Action tab
The Action tab you can change the behavior when you click on the icon of a running application, and when you scroll when the mouse pointer is on top of an application icon. Further you can enable the use of hotkeys to activate your apps.
Final words
As promised in the introduction, Zorin OS gives a lot of freedom to change all kinds of visual settings, to make it your own. And there is even a whole world out there in which yiu can tweak every aspect of your operating syetem to make it perfectly look like for example macOS, even up to icon level. I think for now you already have enough options to make you feel right at home in your new Linux distribution and make it your own.
Go to the Zorin OS Course overview:
Zorin OS Course – Overview of all lessons
Note: This course was written some years ago based on Zorin OS 16.1, but it still fits mostly fine with the most recent 18.1 version. I am currently writing a new book on the most recent Zorin OS, so keep checking this website for updates if you are interested.
Have a look at my latest book on Linux, in Paperback or Kindle format.
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