Home folder change background colour and icon titles

[rudar]

I have been using Linux Mint for ten years already, since LM 11 Katya. Mate has always been my favourite DE, especially because it was so easy to automatically change the background colour in Home folder (Caja) with Edit-Backgrounds and Emblems-Colors. Unfortunately, for the last several editions both of LM and other distros offering Mate as DE (including my current distro, Debian), I always get the same error: although the background colour changes according to my selection, the icon titles remain the same, while before they used to change automatically, from black to white and viceversa.

In other words, if I chose my favourite Danube blue background colour, the icon titles in the Home folder remain black, while they should automatically change to white, because of the necessary contrast. As I was unable to solve this problem automatically as I did with the early versions of Linux Mint I had used before, I was lucky to get the following tip at another forum. It was necessary to open the Terminal and write this

Code: Select all

sudo nano ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css

and then

Code: Select all

.caja-navigation-window .caja-notebook .view {
    background-color: #184a7f;
    color: #ffffff;
}

This solved my problem and I am happy to share this experience with you; if it works in Debian (as it did to me), then it should work in Mint too. However, why isn't it possible to settle the matter automatically, through Edit-Backgrounds in Caja, as it was once before, many years ago? If the user prefers a darker background in Caja, then the icon titles should also adapt automatically and change from black to white, because of the necessary contrast. If Mint developers fix this issue, I am confident this distro will get even more users. Best wishes!

[antikythera]

The reason your former method no longer works being that MATE and caja needed major code changes when they switched to GTK+3 from GTK+2. It may not be Mint Developers who fix it but MATE ones. Either way, try filing an issue here as well: https://github.com/mate-desktop/caja/issues

[rudar]

Fair enough. I admit I thought that Mint developers were also responsible and meritorious for developing Mate as a DE, not just Cinnamon.

Let me add to my previous post that the solution I offered is valid also if people prefer different colour combinations (both for the Caja background and for the icon titles). It is only necessary to enter the right code, which can be find in various web sites, like this one: https://htmlcolorcodes.com/colors/

Then simply log-out, log-in and voila. Yet, I hope that some day this simple change will become automatic again.