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While playing around with a fresh installation of 18.04, I've accidentally selected a photo for my user. I couldn't find an undo or cancel or remove option, so now I'm stuck with a photo on the login screen. Is there any way to return to the default faceless gray avatar?

My workaround would be to create a new user, grab a screenshot, cut the default image and use that as my new "photo" but if there's a real removal option I'd love to know about it.

Update: I did not take a photo with the webcam, just selected one of the provided images, so there is no .face file in my home directory.

Alex
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2 Answers2

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There is no possibility to reset/remove you user photo from the "Users" panel in settings. You need to resort to the terminal and change some configuration settings as root. How to do that is already indicated in this answer (step 1 below), but to fully tidy things up in case you selected your own picture, or took one with your webcam, you should also remove the picture itself (step 2).

Thus, the actions are:

1) Edit the configuration file /var/lib/AccountsService/users/$USER as root user (change $USER to your login name if the variable $USER is not set to your login), and delete the line Icon=/var/lib/AccountsService/icons/<your_username>

2) Remove your custom picture /var/lib/AccountsService/icons/<your_username> if it exists. It won't exist if you took one of the provided images.

vanadium
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I think your user photo is stored in the hidden file .face in your home directory

If you remove it

rm ~/.face

you should get the default faceless gray avatar.

Otherwise you are probably storing your user picture according to this link (the accepted answer by @Rinzwind),

Using CLI, how do I change the user's profile picture?

sudodus
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