[i3] GNOME... why?

Ok, so I am on i3 and happy with it, my apps use dark mode properly…

Except for one class of apps.

The GNOME ones. By this I mean apps by GNOME and Kooha, which as far as I know uses a lot of GNOME stuff.

So here are two questions:

  1. Why are GNOME apps like this?
  2. How do I fix it?

Gnome apps can’t be “themed” to match other DE’s or window managers in most cases. Gnome wants to be Gnome… period.

So just GNOME being GNOME. Ok.

But why can’t they use dark mode? They can use dark mode on, well, GNOME. Can I create a setting to tell GNOME apps to use dark mode?

In my KDE install, I found this…

Might work for your i3?

Might work, I will try soon

Thanks @UncleSpellbinder ! This works for Timeshift as well. However, I need to explicitly set the theme to Breeze-Dark. If I set it to Breeze, it stays in light mode.


So far for my case, this GTK theme issue only affects Timeshift. GParted works as expected.

A side note…
I decided to try out GNOME this weekend and I got nothing more than a serious headache and conviction that GNOME can only be used in a way the developers intended it to be.
If you want your apps to look uniform in there, well… good luck.

Did work, but I also had to, as detailed in the Arch Wiki, pass ADW_DISABLE_PORTAL=1. Does this disable anything important?

Have you tried using “nwg-look” to set a dark-them. I just installed kooha and it launches with a dark-theme for me.

The env variables work, and I don’t use GNOME apps anyway (I found alternatives), but thanks for the recommendation!

And that is why I switched from GNOME to KDE some time ago. GNOME really is more like MAC in the sense that it has a very opinionated view of the world.

It’s not like you can easily setup a tiling window manager as a desktop environment if you want to use it as that, now with Hyprland and Niri with QuickShell project it’s gotten a lot easier to use it as a desktop environment.

At least for me the beauty of running i3 is that it encouraged me to find text-based apps (with Vim-oriented keyboard controls) to get most things done.

Those occasions for which that a KDE or GNOME app is needed have been whittled down considerably over the years. As another i3 user, I’d encourage you to maximize those opportunities to simplify things.

I :heart: :keyboard:

Yeah, same for me!