How To Change Current/Default Runlevel in CentOS 8 / RHEL 8

RedHat systems no longer use actual run levels. They now use targets which are managed by systemd. This has been the case since RHEL7 / CentOS7. This continues to be the case with RHEL8.

Thse are the targets ( runlevels ):

Runlevel	Target Units	Description
0	runlevel0.target / poweroff.target	Power off the system
1	runlevel1.target / rescue.target	Single User mode
2	runlevel2.target / multi-user.target	multi-user mode
3	runlevel3.target / multi-user.target	multi-user mode
4	runlevel4.target / multi-user.target	multi-user mode
5	runlevel5.target / graphical.target	Graphical mode
6	runlevel6.target / reboot.target	Reboot the system

You can show the current default runlevel/target with this command:

systemctl get-default

You can change it like this:

systemctl set-default multi-user.target

Reboot the system:

reboot

Verify that the target has in fact changed:

systemctl get-default

If you just want to change the current runlevel on they fly, without making a config change, just run one of these commands:

systemctl isolate multi-user.target
systemctl isolate graphical.target