I don’t know when this happened. As far as I remembered, my gtk4 apps was dark themed. But recently I started to notice, they were using light theme.
Is there a way to change it to dark?
I installed gnome-tweaks, I can’t seem to change the theme there either.
I am using Cinnamon desktop.
Try gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme 'prefer-dark'
and then log out and back in again.
Still light theme after restarted.
Use the Cinnamon system utilities.
gnome-tweaks is for gnome and will mess up the DE.
Also, check which gnome-related programs are autostarted and disable them for troubleshooting.
grep -iE "ShowIn=.*Gnome" ~/.config/autostart/*.desktop
systemctl --user --all list-units app-*
systemctl --user --all list-units -t servicewhich package is cinnamon system utilities?
the only one way I know to change cinnamon theme is through this one
as you can see, I already set it to dark theme. No matter what dark theme I used, the GTK4 will still be light. And there is no option to change GTK4 theme here.
Do you need them? Aren’t there Cinnamon alternatives for their supposed tasks?
I mean, Cinnamon (Mint development) has developed every required app (originally coming from Gnome) for the Cinnamon environment. 
The GTK4 apps in question is pamac-manager and easyeffects.
I don’t think there are non-gtk4 alternative for those.
I don’t access the app that often but I need them. One is for searching package through UI, and the other is to make sure my ears don’t bleed.
IMHO, pick your poison 
.
Octopi for pacman GUI.
Use easyeffects only once for configuration, or as little time as possible.
We are talking about GNOME Cyclop Polyphemus here! (blinded from Odysseus )
I will try octopi, thanks for the suggestion. Hopefully it’s better than pamac which freezes often.
For me, easyeffects is not “only once” configuration. Aside from limiter to protect me from scream, I very often toggle stereo to mono conversion on and off because some people don’t edit their audio correctly and it pans all over the place.
I prefer to not poison myself, I wanted to have long healthy life. Perhaps immortality.
If you want to troubleshoot, you may inspect journal log for the times you do theme modifications (either Cinnamon, or Gnome utils).
You may run journalctl --user -f in a terminal and do modifications.
gnome-control-center is the BigDaddyElJefe to set dark theme in. dconf is second.
@pegasusearl
Semabe theme is worth a try
Extract it and copy files under gnome/medium to either ~/.themes or ~/.local/share/themes
(Select one with Super and type them)
So we’re all gonna pretend dconf-editor is not a thing?
Apart from that, here’s a simple fix.
As for the reason this started happening, it is because those apps are now using libadwaita. You can tell by the design of the titlebar/toolbar.
Mine is already on that setting.
Unfortunately this is still not a solution for me. My ~/.config/gtk-3.0 folder only has “bookmark”. Not sure if it has something to do with Cinnamon.
So I make my own gtk 4 folder and use this settings.
[Settings]
gtk-theme-name=Vertex-Dark
But not surprisingly, it doesn’t work either.
Solution that I found worked for me was to use GTK_THEME=Adwaita:dark environment variable.
Hmm,…
Looks like my solution GTK_THEME=Adwaita:dark is not great either. It simply change my GTK theme to Adwaita, and it worked because Adwaita dark theme just happened to have theme for GTK4 apps.
The issue is in the theme itself, perhaps because Vertex-Dark is made during ancient civilization. It doesn’t have GTK4.
When I change theme from something to Vertex. It will change theme that Vertex support to Vertex, which doesn’t include GTK4. Then GTK4 apps will use whatever theme is previously set.
The solution is to select theme that had dark theme with GTK4 support, for example Arc-Dark that comes with Endeavour-OS, and then switch to Vertex-Dark.
Perhaps the reason that this issue happened is because I was trying other themes, and the theme I select before switching back to Vertex happened to be light theme.
My understanding of GTK4 might be incorrect, maybe they are… something else, not gtk4???. I don’t know the name of it!!
Also, it’s a little unfortunate, but I can’t select Adwaita theme using Cinnamon configuration tool. They are pretty good!
should do the trick, replace theme with what you use on gtk3
i think they omit this as of issues… same with budgie
easyeffects is real libadwaita and does not follow theme settings anyway… it has a switcher insiode its own settings (client side decoration) these apps can only get themed with “hacky” solutions or something like used to set different themes on Gnome…
adw-gtk3 ?
Yes, adw-gtk3-dark is a good solution for theme consistency if you have to use some libadwaita themed apps.
There are some apps that use GTK4, but not libadwaita (such as transmission-gtk) and as you noted @pegasusearl an old theme like Vertex-Dark does not include a GTK4 theme.
I’ve gone to the other extreme, and deliberately avoided any apps that have libadwaita as a dependency.
