Depending on which display manager you use you could always just use a theme that requires typing a username rather than selecting from a list. I know there are a few SDDM themes like that.
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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CachyOS
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on another pc i actually do do that, but i was wondering if there was another way
I did some quick research and SDDM can do what you want by editing the sddm.conf file. You just have to add the username to HideUsers in the [Users] section.
ah i haven't thought of that
thank you!
The answer will depend on which desktop environment or login manager you're using.
System users are not the right solution. The use-case for such accounts is when you want certain background services to be linked to a non-human account. Eg: Serving web requests from an http user account that only has access to nginx and the /var/www directory. By default, users created in this way don't even have a home directory.
i'm using kde with sddm i believe
In that case, it looks like you need to edit sddm.conf and set the HideUsers= field. Source.
is it normal that the sddm.conf is empty? it's supposed to be /etc/sddm.conf right?
Your system may be reading the default config from /usr/lib/sddm/sddm.conf.d/default.conf, in which case the config file in /etc will probably be empty. You should not edit the contents of a default config.
The recommended location for sddm.conf is within the /etc/sddm.conf.d/ directory, so also check for files there.