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

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.

This is the result after applying the steps described here.

1. Change Workspace Appearance

   1. Open the Workspace Appearance window

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

      

   2. Go to Desktop Theme

      

   3. Select Oxygen and Apply the change

2. (Optional) Remove blue glowing task 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

      

   4. Apply changes

      

3. Change Application Appearance

   1. Open the Application Appearance window

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

   2. Go to Colors

      

   3. Select Obsidian Coast

      

   4. Apply Changes

       Qubes VM Manager should now look like the image below.
      

      

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.

This is the result after applying the steps described here.

1. Change Appearance

   1. Open the Appearance dialog

       Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> Appearance
      

      

   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
      

      

   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

      

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

      

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