Not all themes listed in the 'Themes' folder show in the 'Appearances' tool - [RESOLVED]

[Kester]

Hi,

As my experience with Linux Mint has grown and I have become more confident I have experimented more. This excellent forum has helped me no end and hopefully will be able to help me here.

My system is Linux Mint 20.1 XFCE and I wish to adjust appearances. I've been able to do what I want with icon themes and desktop backgrounds but I have got stuck with themes in general. I've noticed that there are several listed themes showing in /usr/share/themes that do not appear in the 'Appearances' tool item in the menu. This includes but is not specific to a couple of themes I have downloaded. Why would themes included in the 'Themes' folder not necessarily show in in the first tab of the 'Appearances' tool and how can I make themes that do not show appear in the tab.

One of the reasons I am exploring themes is that I would like to change the colour of highlighting in text windows - so far my attempts to edit the gtk.css folder of my currently selected theme have been unsuccessful. I don't like the default washed out green for text highlighting and would prefer something brighter to give a better contrast for my aged eyes.

Advice and suggestions please - thanks.

Cheers.

[michael-hi]

Hi Kester

One reason for this might be that the theme folders in /usr/share/themes don't only relate to Appearance (Gtk) themes. They also include window border themes (eg Kokodi, Moheli) which can be found in the Window Manager settings, and notification themes (eg ZOMG-PONIES!) which are adjusted in the Notifications settings. If you open up the folder for a particular theme, then the ones which are Appearance themes will have a gtk-3.0 folder inside (and sometimes other folders as well), those which are window themes will have an xfwm4 folder inside, and notification themes will have an xfce-notify-4.0 folder inside.

In /usr/share/themes there may be also be some folders for old Gtk2 Appearance themes (eg Raleigh, ThinIce) which do not have a gtk-3.0 folder inside. Xfce has slowly been transitioning from Gtk2 to Gtk3 so I am not sure why they are still there, but these old themes which only support Gtk2 probably won't show in the Appearance menu in LM 20.1.

So it's possible, for instance, that the themes you downloaded are actually just window themes (which will be listed in the Window Manager and not the Appearance settings) or that they are old Gtk2 themes which haven't been updated to be compatible with Gtk3.

If your theme is the default Mint-Y theme, then a quick way to change the green highlight colour is of course to switch to another Mint-Y option (eg Mint-Y-Red) in the Appearance settings. But if you want to change it to another shade of your choice, the hex code for the Mint-Y drab green is #92b372 so you could try changing all instances of that in /usr/share/themes/Mint-Y/gtk-3.0/gtk.css. A better way of doing it would be to copy the Mint-Y folder (as ordinary user, not as root) to .themes in your home folder. Create the hidden .themes folder if it does not already exist. Then rename your copied folder to Mint-Y-BrightGreen or whatever and in its gtk.css file change all instances of 92b372 to say 1aad2b (or whatever you prefer) using the Replace function in the text editor.

If your theme is something different from plain Mint-Y, then its green may not be #92b372 but it should be fairly easy to see what it is. I should think it's harder if you want to be more selective and only change the colour in some situations. That would mean closer examination of the gtk.css file and trying to guess what each named element actually relates to. There is a tool called GtkInspector for anyone really into all this, but it looks pretty complicated.

You may also be interested in this Mint Xfce review by Dedoimedo
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/lin ... xfce.html
He's quite a fussy and demanding reviewer but that's good! The point of interest is the bit headed "System customization" where he suggests editing the gtk.css file to darken the font colour from #303030 to #000000 (black) and thus give more contrast. Of course this only affects system text and not the text on webpages, which is more of a problem as it is often a faint grey that is not good for the eyes.

[Kester]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your very full and useful response. Sorry I was a bit slow to respond but I have been stuck on one or two jobs that needed attention. You've given me plenty to think about including the link which I shall explore. I'll report back with an update of my situation in due course.

Cheers.

[Kester]

Hi Michael,
Here is an update.

I have looked at the link you provided which proved very interesting. Also, following your suggestions combined with what I gleaned from the link, I have copied the Mint-Y theme into the .theme folder where I renamed it and have edited all instances of #92b372 to replace them with a colour of my choice. My newly named theme appeared right away in the 'Appearances'' tool and when I selected it, my changes took effect at once.

I look forward to more experiments thanks to your help.

Cheers.

PS: The themes I downloaded did not contain all the necessary files so your suspicions were correct.

[michael-hi]

Thanks for the update, Kester. I'm pleased the mystery was solved and that you have changed the theme to your liking.