[SOLVED] How can I get the buttons in Nemo look bigger on Mint-Y-Dark-Blue?

[BrunoMiranda]

I've installed the Mint-Y-Dark-Blue theme to soften my reading at night but the buttons on Nemo are really small. Also, the menu text is too much squeezed next to one another:

https://imgur.com/knTVX4f


I would like the size of the buttons and the text to look like 'normal' on the Mint-X-Aqua theme:

https://imgur.com/ClYv0Iz


(I guess it's just a matter of finding the right place on the file and change the icons' size)

I know the file I have to tinker with is

/usr/share/themes/Mint-Y-Dark-Blue/gtk-3.0/gtk.css

because if I change it's name the theme will look different (including the items I want to change), but I've looked into it and I couldn't find what to change amongst all that complexity...

Can anyone help me to modify this, please? Thanks!

[smurphos]

So from that screenshot you are using a theme that's built for a different GTK version to what your system has....

So two quesrions.

What Mint version?

Where did you source the theme from?

[BrunoMiranda]

you are using a theme that's built for a different GTK version to what your system has...

You got me!! (dramatic theatrical death)

I'm using LMDE2 (yeah, me know, me knows) and I've imported it from Mint 19.1. So I guess the GTK version might be different, yes (and also the Cinnamon version).

Since coding and specially GTK is out of my expertize, for what you can see, is it easily possible to achieve my requests, or does it become too cumbersome?
It works well enough, worst chances...

[smurphos]

https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon-s ... 68b8cb.zip

The link will download a copy of the Cinnamon Spices theme repo as it was on 18/12/2018. This is just before all of the third-party Mint-Y variants were removed from Spices in light of the release of 'official' colour variants for Mint 19.1 and LMDE3

In there you will find a Mint-Y-Yltra-Dark and a Mint-Y-Dark-Blue - both are pretty much the same and both support GTK3.18 which is what I think you've got on LMDE2.

When you are extracting the themes to put in ~/.themes or /usr/share/themes bear in mind the folder you want is a layer down in the file hierarchy - i.e the folder to copy is the one selected in my screenshot.

[BrunoMiranda]

Smurphos!

Thank you so much for your help! It did work!!

The only thing that is not working is the scroll bar on the left, when using the Mint-Y-Dark-Blue theme. The part that you can drag up and down to scroll the page is invisible on Nemo (it's actually dark grey on dark grey and remains dark grey when being dragged instead of blue in Firefox), but it works well on Firefox, so that is a small price to pay for my visual comfort.

Meanwhile, for your info, my LMDE2 has GTK3.14.5+4, e believe, not GTK3.18 as you mentioned.

Either way, if you don't have a quick'n easy right under your fingertips way to solve the invisible scroll bar thingy, just let me know and I'll marked this topic as [SOLVED].

Thank you very much again, Smurphos! Cheers.

[smurphos]

Meanwhile, for your info, my LMDE2 has GTK3.14.5+4, e believe, not GTK3.18 as you mentioned.

Either way, if you don't have a quick'n easy right under your fingertips way to solve the invisible scroll bar thingy, just let me know and I'll marked this topic as [SOLVED].

Thank you very much again, Smurphos! Cheers.

No worries. I've just checked both themes in Mint 18.3 (which is GTK 3.18) and the scrollbars look to be working as they should there so i guess there may still be a few incompatibilities between the GTK 3.18 theme and your actual GTK version. Sorry I haven't got a secret stash of pre-GTK 3.18 themes

[JosephM]

This is just going by memory. I don't think Gtk3.14 had the overlay scrollbars and 3.18 does. My memory isn't great on this but it might explain the scrollbar problem.

[Resistor]

Smurphos!

Thank you so much for your help! It did work!!

The only thing that is not working is the scroll bar on the left, when using the Mint-Y-Dark-Blue theme. The part that you can drag up and down to scroll the page is invisible on Nemo (it's actually dark grey on dark grey and remains dark grey when being dragged instead of blue in Firefox), but it works well on Firefox, so that is a small price to pay for my visual comfort.

Meanwhile, for your info, my LMDE2 has GTK3.14.5+4, e believe, not GTK3.18 as you mentioned.

Either way, if you don't have a quick'n easy right under your fingertips way to solve the invisible scroll bar thingy, just let me know and I'll marked this topic as [SOLVED].

Thank you very much again, Smurphos! Cheers.

There was a setting somewhere in Preferences, to toggle the overlay scrollbars, but did not seem to make a difference in Cinnamon.

The Gnome Color Chooser worked for me.
Scroll to the right-most tab - Engines.
Tic the box next to Scrollbars.

Then, go to the Specific tab.
I checked them all, though I don't know if that was needed.

Apply, then Test it in the file manager, by selecting something different.
Or, closing the file manager, then restarting it.

The change showed up in the Xed text editor, by switching tabs, I think.

They are small, but visible.
I have not gotten around to playing with the theme files, yet.
Mostly waiting to see what Mint 19.2 brings.

[BrunoMiranda]

Thank you all for your feedback and comments.

I tried the Gnome Color Chooser. Thanks, @Resistor!

It's a nice tool indeed. But it doesn't affect a thing on Nemo.
It does affect Gedit, but it never had this issue. Gedit always had it's scrool bars. Nemo must have it's scroll bars written some other way different, I guess.
Either way, I'm keeping this software as a reference for future versions of Mint where I might need to tweak some visuals.

I'll try it on another LMDE2 machine I have with MATE and see what it does, although from memory I believe Caja does not suffer from this issue, it accepted the Mint-Y-Dark-Blue from @Smurphos very nicely.


This is one of the things I, as a user, feel sorry for, on the Linux Desktop (specially Cinnamon). The visuals are becoming way too modern (flat saturated childish colours and looks and the imitation of the MacOS, IMO) and the user is losing configurability. (and even on the Microsoft Windows side, XP had it just right and it has been downhill ever since)
And things don't integrate so perfectly (like Evince or the PDF reader in Cinnamon) as it has it's own top bars with it's own colours, menu thing and minimize, maximize and close buttons thing that does not read the desktop theme's settings.
I have already created some mess on my work flow because I rely on brighter colours for the active window and I ended up closing the wrong window because I've mistaken it.
These issues were strong enough to keep me from upgrading to the newest versions of Mint (specially Cinnamon). I love the general Cinnamon desktop but it's default looks just meh... (and it needs some better keyboard integration)

(requiem for the times of the Gnome2 desktop...)


But I'm not belittling all the hard work, the good intentions and the personal efforts of the people working on this - they are very good and work hard so I can have a free OS and desktop - in fact, I thank you all.
But this desktop look and feel programming is something that is beyond me, I'm just a user here who does not understand what's behind the hood and does not have the simple effective tools to configure it all easily from one single control panel and get on back to work.

Once again, thank you all for your feedback and suggestions.