Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

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Huecuva
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Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Huecuva »

So since I have resolved the tray icon issue with Clementine by switching to Strawberry, it appears that Strawberry does not have a Dark Mode, but instead (poorly) allows you to change the colours of a limited selection of parts of the interface. The text of the menu labels cannot be changed and so to make a sort of dark mode theme, these menus become nigh unreadable. I have my Linux Mint configured with a dark theme and Strawberry is not complying with this, though the option in Strawberry settings is set to use system defaults.

Can anyone help me figure this out? Or even suggest yet another music player that will both solve the tray icon problem and have a decent looking dark theme?
Last edited by LockBot on Thu Feb 16, 2023 11:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
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antikythera
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by antikythera »

Use Kvantum, it's a Qt program and not native GTK. Kvantum is slightly more advanced than Qt5 Settings
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Huecuva »

A theme engine? How is this going to help me? Will it allow me to customize Strawberry better? Will it theme all of Mint Cinnamon including Strawberry? I'm not sure what this is supposed to do for me. Please elaborate.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by antikythera »

It can apply GTK themes to Qt programs and you can customise how the theme is applied to strawberry using the kvantum settings. It only themes Qt programs, not the entire desktop or any GTK programs. Cinnamon is GTK and the majority of programs you run on it will be too. The odd one that you install yourself can be Qt. That is a different rendering project used primarily by KDE Plasma and this is where kvantum comes in. It's an advanced theme tweaker for Qt programs to load GTK themes onto them properly.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Huecuva »

Ah, I see. Thank you. I will try that.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Beerislife »

You need to use the QT5 Configuration Tool to set the theme for QT apps to GTK2.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by antikythera »

Beerislife wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 7:36 pm You need to use the QT5 Configuration Tool to set the theme for QT apps to GTK2.
set to kvantum when using kvantum
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Huecuva »

I've installed Kvantum and I can't seem to make it work at all. I've set the QT5 Configuration Tool to Kvantum-dark (though I have tried Kvantum as well) and Strawberry still has the default white theme. Also, the QT5 Configuration Tool says right at the top of it that "This application is not configured correctly."

What am I even supposed to do in the Kvantum Manager? I've selected the Installed Theme as KvAdaptaDark and put Strawberry in the Application(s) list but that has not changed anything either.

This level of complexity just to make a theme work is absolutely absurd. It's completely unintuitive. Also, I may just end up doing a fresh install of Mint 21, as since I upgraded it, it now takes an eternity to display my desktop after I log in, and opening Strawberry also takes an eternity. I don't know what else has been effected, but this is not acceptable.

EDIT: Well, now that I've restored the snapshot that the mintupgrade process forced me to create, I no longer have an Internet connection on that particular machine. I have tried

Code: Select all

ip link set enp8s0 up
to no avail. Looks like I will be fresh installing after all. This is the only time I've had issues like this upgrading Mint.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Axel358 »

I would recommend using a Gtk music player, i personally use Lollypop, it's modern and has support for dark mode. Regarding qt5ct, if u're getting the 'this application isn't configured correctly' is probably because the QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME isn't set to qt5ct, edit /etc/profile and add "export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct" without the quotes. Then login again for changes to take effect.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Huecuva »

So I took your suggestion and installed Lollypop. Unfortunately, it's nothing like Foobar2000 (which is why I was using Clementine and Strawberry) and I really don't like the interface at all. Navigating the menus is frustrating (you seem to have to be in certain screens for the buttons to even do anything?) and even after adding my music collection and giving it several minutes to scan the library there was nothing there. It's awful and I don't like it.

I will make another attempt to get Strawberry working with a dark theme using your other suggestion.

EDIT: Adding that line to /etc/profile did not work. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing in the Kvantum Manager. That's quite possibly the most unintuitive and confusing piece of software I've used in years. Not only that, I've googled how to use Kvantum and it's still as clear as mud. I've found this tutorial which is who knows how old that tells me to add export QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=kvantum to ~/.profile instead. Also, this one says the same thing. However, that didn't work either. Strawberry still is not using a dark theme. Though, the QT5 Configuration Tool no longer says it's not configured correctly.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by sebastjava »

Strawberry? Great choice! I'm using this music player too...

As said before, it is based on Qt5. There, in the Qt5 Configuration Tool, there are many things you can do. I just did this 5 seconds quick test:

Qt5 > Appearance > Style: Fusion, Palette: Custom Color scheme: darker

And I can confirm it works on Strawberry! Just don't forget to click on Apply or OK buttons. It is all there in your menu, no need to install anything, and no special CLI.

Style: Fusion, Palette: Custom Color scheme: darker. (On LM Cinnamon 20.3.)
Style: Fusion, Palette: Custom Color scheme: darker. (On LM Cinnamon 20.3.)
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Huecuva
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Huecuva »

I just tried that. It still didn't work. I don't know what's going on, but Strawberry refuses to use a dark theme of any sort no matter what I try.

I give up. I've installed Deadbeef and Exaile. We'll see which one of those I like better.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by sebastjava »

Huecuva wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:07 pm I just tried that. It still didn't work.
Probably because you changed some Tools > Settings > Appearances in Strawberry. It is all on default here: default style, default colors, etc. I just had to open Qt5 Settings from my main Cinnamon menu, and choose Fusion style with a custom color scheme. Then click Apply or OK.

I have the latest Strawberry from PPA and everything works perfectly:

Strawberry-dark-2.jpg
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by sebastjava »

I changed my picture from my previous post. I made it even better. That is still the same Qt5 settings, plus, in Strawberry Tools > Settings > Appearances > Tabbar colors: custom color, no gradient. And I readjusted the Length column, etc.

Strawberry is great.
  • Not so many bugs.
  • Replay Gain.
  • Equalizer.
  • Cross-fade.
  • Many audio formats.
  • Etc.
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demux
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by demux »

Since the upgrade to Mint 21, I'm experiencing the same issue, Strawberry does not pick up the dark theme anymore. No matter what I do in the QT5 Config or Strawberry settings, still no luck.
Also, I've installed the Flatpak version, same issue there, then went back to the DEB jammy version, light theme still hurting my eye. In Mint 20.3 I did have no issues at all with themes.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by demux »

I noticed, that Strawberry for Jammy is a QT6 application. However, it looks like the QT6 Configuration Tool is unavailable in the repo. Would that might do the trick, that Strawberry can potentially pickup dark theme, when configured for QT6?

I tried the following, from https://github.com/trialuser02/qt6ct instructions, but it broke QT5 applications, so they ended up with the default light theme as well.

Code: Select all

Alternatively, create the file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/100-qt6ct with
the following line:

export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt6ct

(or qt5ct for compatibility with Qt5 Configuration Tool)

Now restart X11 server to take the changes effect.
Maybe I was doing something wrong; I'd appropriate help with QT6 config on Mint 21.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by demux »

I've just found that the Dev of Strawberry is actually mentioning this issue in the Wiki. Seems not only to apply to KDE exclusively; qt6ct is needed.
https://wiki.strawberrymusicplayer.org/ ... s_on_Linux.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by Huecuva »

Good to know. I think I'll just stick with Deadbeef or Exaile. I don't actually use a locally installed music player very often anyway since I have myMPD on my file server with all my music.
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by demux »

I could not get really along with alternative players, Strawberry is still best and great for me. So, since QT5 is still supported, I decided to take the effort compiling a QT5 version of Strawberry for me.

Once all the additional development packages / headers and libraries were installed, actually it is a lot, I manged to get Strawberry running after one go with QT5 in dark mode. Strawberry is back and works great for me now :)

Grab the code, and follow the instructions from: https://github.com/strawberrymusicplayer/strawberry

Code: Select all

cd strawberry
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DBUILD_WITH_QT5=ON
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install
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Re: Strawberry does not use system theme or colors

Post by touz »

demux wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 7:25 am Since the upgrade to Mint 21, I'm experiencing the same issue, Strawberry does not pick up the dark theme anymore. No matter what I do in the QT5 Config or Strawberry settings, still no luck.
Also, I've installed the Flatpak version, same issue there, then went back to the DEB jammy version, light theme still hurting my eye. In Mint 20.3 I did have no issues at all with themes.
Same here, I did a clean install of Mint 21, coming from 20.3, and I can confirm that it was working on 20.3 and it isn't on 21. What a bummer...
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