Color of selected items, GTK theme?

[fishermichael]

Hi, I'm trying to customize my lovely Cinnamon desktop. I've toyed with several different Cinnamon themes, and have found a few that I like. The problem is that no matter which theme i choose the "selected color" of items (icons on the desktop, selected text, etc...) doesn't change. It's all still the factory green. If I go to Cinnamon Settings > Themes > Other Settings, and change the GTK theme to something like Adwaita, the color of those items does indeed change. No matter what new GTK theme I install, however, it doesn't show up in the settings menu. I love Mint, I just want to know how to make it blue...Linux PepperMint instead of Linux SpearMint.

[mint-me]

I have also been seeking a nice "Blue look", and have tried many different things, realizing that components do need be customized to fit Cinnamon nicely. For me the best option (and stable) for now, is to:

1. GO Cinnamon Settings > Themes > Other settings - select "Adwaita" as the GTK+ theme - this gives the blue highlights throughout. I also selected Adwaita as the Window theme too.
2. For nice blue icons, download my modified Elementary-X icons.
3. Extract to get "Elementary-X" icon folder.
4. Open as Administrator /usr/share/icons directory, then copy Elementary-X into it.
5. GO Cinnamon Settings > Themes > Other settings - then select "Elementary-X" as the Icon theme.
6. For maximum compatability and stability, then select a Theme for Panel/Menu from Cinnamon Settings > Themes.
7. Select your Wallpaper of choice, from menu Preferences > Appearance, or right-click on desktop and select "Change Desktop Background".

Enjoy.

[zimbo]

Fishermichael,

I had exactly the same problem as yourself, I had the window and GTK+ theme I liked but wanted to change the green to blue. My setup is
Cinnamon theme – dark-glass
Windows theme – Shiki-Colors-Metacity
Cursor theme – Adwaita
Icon theme – Faenza-Blue-Dark2
GTK+ theme – Mint-X

I had tried various different themes, as suggested above by mint-me, but couldn't find anything quite to my liking so I decided to try and tweak the setup I had. This is what I did:

Made a copy of /usr/share/themes/Mint-X in my ~/.themes folder so that I could work on it there without requiring root privileges. I renamed this folder to Mint-X-Blue.

In Mint-X-Blue/gtk-3.0 there is a file called gtk.css where a lot of the colours are defined. What I did was to change each of the defined colours to find out how they effected the theme. In the end it was only a few that required changing. They were:

@define-color selected_bg_color #accd8a;
@define-color progressbar_background_a #accd8a;
@define-color progressbar_background_b #c3dea8;
@define-color menuitem_background_a #accd8a;
@define-color menuitem_background_b #c3dea8;

I changed all five to the blue shade I chose, #79a3b5. If you use a different shade background_a and background_b you will get a merged color effect.

These amendments changed the green to blue in the gnome applications but there was still some green in Nautilus and other apps like LibreOffice. After searching the web I found this solution.

Install dconf Tools (sudo apt-get install dconf-tools)
Run dconf Editor (found in Menu > System Tools)
Navigate to org > gnome > desktop > interface and locate the gtk-color-scheme option in the displayed list.
Click in the space to the right of gtk-color-scheme and enter 'selected_bg_color:#79a3b5' without the quotes and substituting your chosen shade of blue for mine.
Close dconf Editor

With this change you will find that the green is replaced by blue in Nautilus, LibreOffice and other applications.

I still have some green in Firefox which might require png files to be edited, and in other apps which I still have to resolve but my theme is now mainly blue.

Once you are happy with your changes copy Mint-X-Blue back to /usr/share/themes

Hopefully this will help if you decide to go down this route. I do realise that it might not be Mint-X that you are wanting to amend but my experience might guide you in the right direction.