GTK Theme applied for "old" apps only

[madcoda9000]

Hello,

I am a endeavouros newbi and have installed endevouros successfully (jippi). Now I’ve activated gnome-extensions and the extension user-themes. Then I’ve create the folder .themes in my home and inserted a new theme there (WhiteSur-Dark).

This seems to work, as i can select the theme in gnome tewaks, but it is applied to third party applications only (for ex. chrome). But for all native gnome apps it is not applied.

I’ve tried this command already:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme

It is driving me mad that i am not able to figure out whats the problem…
In the screenshot attached, you can see that the theme is applied to google chrome but not to the terminal.

Here are my theme settings:

Hopefully somone can help me.

All the best
Sascha

[perstreperous]

It is possible, but the method is rather ugly.

Using non-Adwaita themes (i.e. other than the global “black” or “white” which you tried) in GTK 4 applications is tricky because the theming has to be done individually:

1. Download and install the theme into ~/.themes. It must have a “v40” variant. For example, my ~/.themes looks like:

Nordic-darker Nordic-darker-v40

2. Run the application to be themed from the command line as:

GTK_THEME=<theme name> <application name>

For example:

GTK_THEME=Nordic-darker-v40 gnome-firmware

And the GTK 4 application is themed:

Unfortunately, GNOME has taken decisively against theming (alternative lengthy technical post) although it has, I think reluctantly, held back from preventing GTK 4 applications being themed at all, other than “black” and “white”.

There is also an application, Gradience, which allows global (GTK 3 and GTK 4) colour schemes to be set. Unfortunately, when I used it - several versions ago - the end result was a complete mess which had to be fixed manually.

[madcoda9000]

Hello,

so it seems your tipp is working. Many thanks for that.

But it is a really ugly solution to start every program from terminal

Is there a possibility to set such a paramerter globally?

All the best
Sascha

[perstreperous]

GTK_THEME appears not to be a global environment variable. I have found attempts to fake that, with scripts running in the background to force GTK_THEME to be added as a parameter as above whenever a named application is run. (The scripts kill the application process then restart it immediately with the parameter added). That is far too risky for my liking …

Unfortunately, we are just going to have to get used to GNOME not liking theming and having a very narrow view of how its applications should appear

[madcoda9000]

Hello,

I’ve found a solution for that.

1. open a terminal
2. create the file .profile (nano .profile)
3. insert: export GTK_THEME=WhiteSur-Dark (STRG+X → yes)
4. reboot

Tadaaaa

All the best and thx for putting in the right directory!

Sascha

[LcGoKanda]

I was replacing the gtk4 folder in the .config directory with the one of the wanted theme but this solution seems better to me.
Thx