Raspberry Pi OS: A Complete Guide to the New Control Centre

If you’ve just upgraded to Raspberry Pi OS Trixie, some settings may not be where you expect them to be. Tools like Appearance Settings, Screen Configuration, Mouse and Keyboard settings, and other small utilities have been grouped into a new app called Control Centre. I think it’s a good idea, but the first time you open it, you may need a few minutes to find everything.

The Raspberry Pi Control Centre is the new desktop settings app in Raspberry Pi OS Trixie. It brings many system, display, interface, keyboard, mouse, and appearance options into one window.

In this article, I will explain what the Raspberry Pi Control Centre is and show you all the configuration options available in it.

If you’re feeling lost in all the Raspberry Pi jargon, I’ve got something to help you out. I’ve created a free glossary that explains all the essential terms and abbreviations in a way that’s easy to understand. It’s a great resource to have by your side. Get your free copy here.

What Is the Raspberry Pi Control Centre?

Control Centre is a GUI application introduced in Raspberry Pi Trixie that serves as your system configuration tool. It is similar to the control panels or settings applications of other desktop environments and Windows.

I like to think of the Control Centre as the graphical counterpart to the raspi-config utility. It includes most of the options available through raspi-config, while also providing additional settings specific to the desktop environment, such as customization of the Desktop and Main Menu.

The Control Centre is available exclusively in the Desktop edition of Raspberry Pi OS Trixie and later releases. To launch it, head to Main Menu → Preferences → Control Centre.

One thing I appreciate about the Control Centre is its straightforward layout. The main categories are listed on the left-hand side, while the settings for the selected category appear on the right, making navigation simple and intuitive.

Raspberry Pi Control Centre Settings Explained

Now we will go over each section of the Control Centre, and I will give you a brief description of what each configuration option does. I will also try to provide you with links to detailed articles that might help you in understanding how to use these settings.

Defaults

This section allows you to restore your settings to the default values. If you have changed any settings and are unsure, you can click Set Defaults to restore them to their defaults.

There are three options here. Different default values are saved for different screen sizes. If you are using your Raspberry Pi with a Large Screen, click Set Defaults next to the “For Large Screens” option; do the same for medium or small screens.

Keep in mind tho that these default values are for appearance settings only, such as your wallpaper, desktop icons, themes, and sizes. It does not affect any interface configuration, such as SSH or WiFi.

Desktop

The Desktop section allows you to configure your GUI-related settings and themes.

This section contains the following options:

• Layout: Sets how the wallpaper should be applied to your desktop. You can select options such as Fill screen with image (stretches it), Centre image on screen (centers a single copy), or Tile Image (repeats multiple copies).
• Picture: Change the desktop wallpaper by specifying a file (all image formats supported).
• Colour: Set the background colour of your desktop. The colour is only visible if you have not set any Wallpaper image or have set the Layout to “No Image“.
  
• Text Colour: Change the color of the text displayed on your desktop, i.e., the labels of your desktop icons.
  
• Desktop Folder: Select the folder that shows up on your desktop. All files, folders, and shortcuts in this folder will appear as icons on your desktop. By default, this points to your ~/Desktop folder.
• Show Home Folder: Creates a shortcut to your user’s home folder (/home/pat, for example) as a separate icon on your desktop.
  
• Show Wastebasket: Puts a trash icon on your desktop, which you can use to delete files from your system.
• Show Mounted Disks: Whenever you plug in a USB drive or mount a storage device, it automatically appears on your desktop. You can then double-click that icon to automatically mount the drive and open it in your file explorer.

Display

The Display section lets you control a few miscellaneous screen settings.
Unintuitively, it doesn’t control resolution, which you’ll find under Screens instead.

This section contains the following settings:

• Screen Blanking: Makes the Raspberry Pi’s display go black after 10 minutes of inactivity.
  This is similar to putting your Raspberry Pi into sleep mode.
• On-Screen Keyboard: Configures how the on-screen keyboard works. You can choose between “Enabled“, “Disabled“, or “Enabled if touchscreen found“.
• On-Screen Keyboard Location: Select which display the on-screen keyboard should appear on. If you leave it blank, the on-screen keyboard will always appear alongside the focused window.

Interfaces

The Interfaces section lets you enable or disable communication interfaces available on your Raspberry Pi.

The following interfaces can be toggled in this section:

• SSH: Toggle to enable remote access via SSH.
• VNC: VNC is a remote desktop technology that lets you share your screen over a LAN or the internet. You can then use clients such as RealVNC or TigerVNC to view and control the Raspberry Pi desktop remotely.
• SPI: Enable the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). This is a GPIO-specific interface that lets you communicate with SPI devices via GPIO.
• I2C: This is similar to the SPI interface in that it allows devices or HATs that use an I2C interface to communicate with the Raspberry Pi.
• Serial Port: Enables the UART interface of your GPIO Tx (GPIO 14) and Rx (GPIO 15) pins. This can then be used to interface with other devices using the serial protocol.
• Serial Console: Enable text console over your serial port (requires the serial port to be enabled). You can use it to log in to your Raspberry Pi and access the terminal (CLI) via a serial port tool such as Tera Term or PuTTY.
• 1-Wire: The 1-Wire protocol is a single-wire communication protocol used by sensors such as temperature and humidity sensors, as well as battery monitoring circuits. By enabling this, you allow those devices to connect to your Raspberry Pi via your GPIO.

Keyboard

The Keyboard settings allow you to configure the behavior of the keyboard connected to your Raspberry Pi.

This section contains the following options:

• Repeat Delay: Set the delay after pressing and holding a key, after which the pressed key will be repeated. You can set the interval between 100 and 1000 milliseconds.
• Repeat Interval: The duration you choose determines how often the key will be repeated after the key repeat has triggered. You can set the interval between 10 and 200 milliseconds.
• Type here to test keyboard settings: The text box below lets you test keyboard settings.
• Layout: Set your keyboard’s layout for your language or country.
  You can select the Model, the Layout, and the Variant of your keyboard.
  

Localisation

The Localization section of the Control Centre allows us to configure the Locale and time zone settings on our Raspberry Pi.

It contains the following settings:

• Locale: Your system locale determines which language and formatting are used throughout the system. It determines the language of menus and dialogues, as well as the formatting of dates, times, and currency.
  
• Timezone: The timezone determines the offset from GMT used to calculate your local time. This setting is independent of the Locale setting.
  
• Keyboard: This setting replicates the Layout option in the Keyboard section (you can configure the layout from either section). This setting is also independent of the Locale setting.
  
• Wireless LAN Country: Select which wireless regulations the Raspberry Pi should adhere to when connecting to a WiFi network. Different countries have different regulations on WiFi channels, frequencies, and transmission power.
  

Main Menu

This section lets you configure the layout of your Raspberry Pi desktop’s Main Menu.

You can organize and rearrange submenus from this dialogue. You can also choose to hide or show any specific submenu by toggling the check box next to that submenu.

You can also edit any item by selecting that item and clicking the “Edit Item” button to the right.

This will allow you to change the Name and the Icon for that submenu.

If you click on the arrow next to any submenu, you can see all the applications in that submenu as well. You can perform similar operations on each application as well.

You can also add a new application to the menu by clicking the “New Item” button. The options in this dialogue are similar to creating a new shortcut on the desktop.

Mouse

The next section is the Mouse section. This allows you to configure the behaviour of the mouse connected to your Raspberry Pi.

It contains the following options:

• Speed: Changes the movement speed of your mouse pointer. You can increase it to get a larger mouse movement for smaller physical movement of the mouse itself.
• Double-click: Configure the maximum interval between clicks to determine when they are considered a double-click rather than two separate clicks.
• Click the square to test double-click speed: Clicking on the box next to this option lets you test your double-click speed. If two clicks are registered as a double-click, this box turns white; if it stays grey, the clicks were not recognized as a double-click.
• Left-handed: Switch to Left-handed operation of the mouse. This inverts the operation and function of the two mouse buttons to make it easier for left-handed users.

Performance

The Performance section contains miscellaneous settings.
At the moment, it doesn’t really affect your Raspberry Pi’s speed.

At present, this section only contains two settings:

• Overlay File System: Enable write protection on your SD Card to make your system read-only. This is commonly used in kiosk or industrial applications where you don’t want the user to make any changes to your system.
  It has two independent options:
  
  • Use Overlay: Used to write-protect the Root partition of your SD card. It creates an overlay layer in which all your changes are retained at runtime. However, on a system reset, this overlay layer is discarded, and only the base system is loaded (effectively discarding any changes you made).
  • Write-protect Boot Partition: Enables write-protection on your Boot partition, which prevents your firmware and boot configuration from updating.
• Disable USB Current Limit: This limit is in place to control the current supplied to USB peripherals and prevent undervoltage on the Raspberry Pi itself. This is required for some specific high-power peripherals. But before enabling this, make sure you have an adequate power supply for your Raspberry Pi.

Printers

The Printers section is to add printers to your Raspberry Pi.

You can click on the “Add Printer” button to configure your printer with the Raspberry Pi. It uses the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) to communicate with and register the printer.

Screens

The Screens section of the Control Centre lets you configure the properties and settings of all displays connected to your Raspberry Pi.

You can see the name of each screen by clicking the “Identify” button.

If you have multiple screens, you can drag and drop them to match the physical layout of your monitors/screens.

You can navigate to Screens > (name_of_your_screen) to change the resolution, orientation, and scaling options for each screen as well.

System

The System section of the Control Centre allows us to manage system and user administration, as well as login settings and passwords.

It contains the following settings:

• Password: Change the Login Password for your Raspberry Pi.
  
• Hostname: Change the Hostname of your Raspberry Pi. The Hostname is the human-readable identity assigned to your Raspberry Pi. It is an alternative to remembering the numerical IP address.
  
• Boot: Determines the default boot behavior of your Raspberry Pi. You can choose to boot to the desktop or CLI. If you are on the desktop version of Raspberry Pi OS and have set the boot to CLI, you will experience something similar to Raspberry Pi OS Lite on your next boot. You can still start your display manager by executing the command:
  sudo systemctl start display-manager
• Console Auto Login: When you boot into the CLI, the system automatically logs in without prompting for your password.
• Desktop Auto Login: Similar to Console Auto Login, but for the Desktop boot. So when you boot to the Desktop of your Raspberry Pi, you will not be prompted to enter your password.
• Splash Screen: Choose whether to see the Raspberry Pi splash screen when booting or the Linux boot messages scrolling on the display.
• Browser: Changes the default browser on your Raspberry Pi when clicking the taskbar shortcut. You can choose between Chromium and Firefox.
• Admin Password: You can disable this toggle to allow for passwordless sudo operations. This will allow you and all applications to perform administrative tasks without prompting for your root password.

Tip: Command lines can be a pain to memorize. I put the essential Linux commands on a printable cheat sheet so you don't have to keep googling them. You can grab the PDF here if you want to save some time.

Taskbar

The Taskbar section of the Control Centre lets you customize your taskbar, which appears at the top of your main display.

It contains the following customization options:

• Size: Customize the size of your taskbar. You can choose from four available size options.
• Position: Change the position of your taskbar. You can choose to display your taskbar at either the top or the bottom.
• Colour: Select the background colour of your taskbar.
  
• Text Colour: Similar to the Colour setting, this lets you change the text colour on your taskbar.

Theme

The final section in the Control Centre is Theme. This section allows you to customize the theming options applied throughout your Raspberry Pi OS.

This section contains the following customization options:

• Font: Select the font that is used throughout your system. This includes the font of your taskbar as well as icons displayed on the desktop and in other applications. You can also choose the font size from this dialogue.
• Highlight Colour: Changes the colour used to distinguish the highlighted item from the non-highlighted item. This also changes the background colour of the selected window’s title bar.
  
• Highlight Text Colour: Similar to Highlight Colour, but changes the colour of the text displayed in highlighted items.
• Mouse Cursor: Change the size of your cursor/pointer. You can choose from Large, Medium, or Small.
• Theme: Switch between the Dark and Light themes. This theme is applied system-wide to all applications that support the theming style.
  

FAQs

Is the Raspberry Pi Control Centre available on older Raspberry Pi OS releases?

No, Raspberry Pi Control Centre is only available on Raspberry Pi Trixie or later. In previous versions of Raspberry Pi, these settings were divided into separate applications, such as Appearance Settings, Keyboard, and Mouse.

Can I still use the old Raspberry Pi Configuration tool in Trixie?

No, the previous configuration tools, such as Appearance Settings, Keyboard, Mouse, Screen Configuration, and Printer Settings, have been removed and combined into a single application named Control Centre.

The individual versions of those applications are no longer available in Raspberry Pi Trixie.

How does Raspberry PI Control Centre differ from raspi-config?

Raspi-config is a command-line tool that can be run from the terminal of your Raspberry Pi. Raspi-config is considered the standard method for configuring your Raspberry Pi.

However, in my experience, Control Centre offers all the options available in raspi-config and adds a few GUI-specific settings as well. The only settings not available in Control Centre are the advanced settings tab of raspi-config.

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