Qubes-Community-Content/docs/customization/dark-theme.md

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Dark Theme in Dom0

Dark KDE in Dom0

The following text describes how to change the default light theme to a dark theme. This is just an example, feel free to adjust the appearance to your taste.

The image below shows the default light theme after installation. begin light theme

This is the result after applying the steps described here. end result dark theme

  1. Change Workspace Appearance

    1. Open the Workspace Appearance window

       Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> System Settings -> Workspace Appearance
      

      Workspace Appearance

    2. Go to Desktop Theme

      Desktop Menu

    3. Select Oxygen and Apply the change

  2. (Optional) Remove blue glowing task items

    blue glowing task bar items

    1. Adjust Oxygen Details

       Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> System Settings -> Workspace Appearance -> Desktop Theme -> Details (Tab)
      
    2. Select Oxygen

    3. Change Theme Item -> Task Items from Oxygen Task Items to Air Task Items

      Change Task items look

    4. Apply changes

      task bar items blue glowing removed

  3. Change Application Appearance

    1. Open the Application Appearance window

       Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> System Settings -> Application Appearance
      
    2. Go to Colors

      colors tab

    3. Select Obsidian Coast

      set to Obsidian Coast

    4. Apply Changes

       Qubes VM Manager should now look like the image below.
      

      result black Qubes Manager

Note: Changing the Window Decorations from Plastik for Qubes will remove the border color and the VM name. The problem with Plastik for Qubes is that it does not overwrite the background and text color for Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons. The three buttons are therefore hard to read.

Dark XCFE in Dom0

The following text describes how to change the default light theme to a dark theme. This is just an example, feel free to adjust the appearance to your taste.

The image below shows the default light theme after installation. begin light theme

This is the result after applying the steps described here. end result dark theme

  1. Change Appearance

    1. Open the Appearance dialog

       Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> Appearance
      

      appearance dialog

    2. Change Style to Albatross

    Note: The black appearance theme Xfce-dusk makes the VM names in the Qubes OS Manager unreadable.

  2. (Optional) Change Window Manager Style

    1. Open the Window Manager dialog

       Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> Appearance
      

      window manager dialog

    2. Change the Theme in the Style Tab (e. g. Defcon-IV). All available themes work.

Dark App VM, Template VM, Standalone VM, HVM (Linux Gnome)

Almost all Qubes VMs use default applications based on the GTK toolkit. Therefore the description below is focused on tools from the Gnome Desktop Environment.

Using "Gnome-Tweak-Tool"

The advantage of creating a dark themed Template VM is, that each AppVM which is derived from the Template VM will be dark themed by default.

Note: Gnome-Tweak-Tool crashes under Archlinux. A workaround is to assign the AppVM to another TemplateVM (Debian, Fedora) which has Gnome-Tweak-Tool installed. Start the AppVM and configure the settings. Shutdown the machine and switch the TemplateVM back to Archlinux.

  1. Start VM

    Note: Remember that if you want to make the change persistent, the change needs to be made in the TemplateVM, not the AppVM.

  2. Install Gnome-Tweak-Tool

    • Fedora

        sudo dnf install gnome-tweak-tool
      
    • Debian

        sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
      
  3. (Only AppVM) Stop TemplateVM and start AppVM

  4. Add Gnome-Tweak-Tool to the Application Menu

    1. Right-click on VM entry in Qubes VM Manager select Add/remove app shortcuts

    2. Select Tweak Tool and press the > button to add it

      Application Dialog

  5. Enable Global Dark Theme

    1. Debian only

       cd ~/.config/
       mkdir gtk-3.0
       cd gtk-3.0/
       touch settings.ini
      
    2. Start Tweak Tool from the VM application menu and set the Global Dark Theme switch to on

      Global Dark Theme enabled

  6. (Optional) Modify Firefox

    Note: Firefox uses GTK style settings by default. This can create side effects such as unusable forms or search fields. One way to avoid this is to add the following line to /rw/config/rc.local:

         sed -i.bak "s/Exec=firefox %u/Exec=bash -c 'GTK_THEME=Adwaita:light firefox %u'/g" /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
    
  7. Restart VM or all applications

Manually

Manually works for Debian, Fedora and Archlinux.

  1. Start VM

    Note: Remember that if you want to make the change persistent, the change needs to be made in the TemplateVM, not the AppVM.

  2. Enable Global Dark Theme

     cd ~/.config/
     mkdir gtk-3.0
     cd gtk-3.0/
     touch settings.ini
    

    Add the following lines to settings.ini

     [Settings]
     gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme=1
    
  3. Follow steps 6 and 7 in: Using Gnome-Tweak-Tool