how to change colour of Desktop icon label text in xfce

[kingsthane]

Just switched today to Mint lmde-xfce 64bit after a number of years using ubuntu. Generally happy so far. However I've one problem, that is inescapable so far. I've installed my favourite Desktop background, which is mostly quite dark and now I cannot read the black text labels for the Desktop icons. How can I change the black text to another lighter colour of my choice? Many thanks.

[xenopeek]

Moved here by moderator

[rhodry]

You need these two files in your /home/<user> folder:

.gtkrc-2.0 & .gtkrc.mine # note they are both "dot" files ie hidden. Create them if necessary.

Don't worry too much about anything else that may or may not be in the .gtkrc-2.0 file other than you need to add the highlighted line in the example below if it is not there:

# -- THEME AUTO-WRITTEN DO NOT EDIT
include "/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"

style "user-font" {
font_name = "Envy Code R 12"
}

widget_class "*" style "user-font"

gtk-font-name="Envy Code R 12"

include "/home/<yourusername>/.gtkrc.mine"

# -- THEME AUTO-WRITTEN DO NOT EDIT

This imports your personal additions to a system generated file.

The important file is the 2nd one, which is where you make all your personal preference changes that will not get overridden by system defaults:

example:

# user added stuff

style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {
XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 0

base[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
base[SELECTED] = "#5050ff"
base[ACTIVE] = "#0000ff"

fg[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
fg[SELECTED] = "#ffffff"
fg[ACTIVE] = "#ffffff"
}
widget_class "*XfdesktopIconView*" style "xfdesktop-icon-view"

style "panel"
{
bg[NORMAL] = "#3685d5"
fg[NORMAL] = "#ffffff"
}

widget_class "*Panel*" style "panel"
widget "*Panel*" style "panel"
class "*Panel*" style "panel"

The red line sets the Desktop icon surrounds to transparent (rather than a highlight colour) and the rest of it changes colours for the text foreground/background/highlight and the panel colours.

You can use any colour combinations you like to match your themes - the colours must be expressed in hexadecimal form, like #3685d5. To find the hexadecimal number for any particular colour, install a little program from the repos called 'gcolor2".

Log out and log back in when you are done.

cheers,
rhodry.

[kingsthane]

Thanks Rhodry. I'll try this out tomorrow and hopefully get back with the results. Cheers

[kingsthane]

Rhodry;
Many thanks! Your howto worked great. I may play around with the settings in a few days. But just pasting your data into my new .gtkrc.mine file did the trick perfectly for now. I'll mark this thread as solved. Cheers

[rhodry]

Many thanks! Your howto worked great.

Glad it helped.

Just a point I forgot. I have been using this for a LONG time so I forgot to mention that you do not need the part from "style panel" if you are using Xfce v4.8. Panel colours can now be set from the gui Settings Manger.

You can experiment all you like with colour combinations - it depends very much on what gtk theme & desktop background you are running to get the "nicest" mix.

Welcome to the power of "inside Linux". Have fun

rhodry.