Modifying icon spacing in Cinnamon vertical panel

[fox]

I have seen some general posts about this, but I'm not sure how they apply to a Cinnamon theme added from settings, and also to a vertical panel (left side). This is for Mint 19.3. The theme I'm currently using is Cinnamox-Rhino, but I'm not sure that matters. The theme appears in my home/.theme folder, but there are also Cinnamon themes in /usr/share/themes. What is want to modify is the spacing between icons in a left vertical panel; I want to increase it. Ideally it would be a universal modification that would apply to any theme, but if not possible, then for the Cinnamox-Rhino theme in my home folder.

The other thing I would like to do is reduce the size of icons added to the panel while keeping the panel the same width. In panel settings, there are fixed icon sizes; the largest being 48px and the next largest being 32. Ideally I would want something in-between. There are three zones, but it appears that the only zone that affects icon size on a left panel is the Left Zone.

[smurphos]

Hi,

I'm not sure what applets you have loaded on your panel but these are the strings to search for and tweak in the Cinnamox theme's cinnamon.css. You likely want to increase the vertical padding.

Code: Select all

  .applet-box.vertical {
    padding: 3px 0; }

Code: Select all

  .window-list-box.vertical {
    spacing: 3px;
    padding: 2px 0; }

Code: Select all

.panel-launchers.vertical {
    padding: 3px 0; }
    .panel-launchers.vertical .launcher {
      padding: 3px 0; }

Code: Select all

  .panel-left .window-list-item-box {
    padding: 2px 0;
    box-shadow: 1px 0 1px 1px rgba(216, 229, 242, 0.22) inset; }

Code: Select all

  .panel-left .grouped-window-list-item-box {
    padding: 3px 0; }

To make the icon size control more granular see viewtopic.php?f=211&t=309293
Note that on a vertical panel - left zone == top zone and right zone == bottom zone.

[fox]

Thanks for the quick reply, smurphos. I gather from your answer that there is no way to increase the vertical padding in all themes without editing each individual theme. The applets on my panel are just favourite applications, like Thunderbird, Firefox, LibreOffice Writer, etc. (See attachment.) To increase the spacing between them, do I have to edit all five of the code boxes, or just the panel launchers portion?

[fox]

Thanks for the quick reply, smurphos. I gather from your answer that there is no way to increase the vertical padding in all themes without editing each individual theme. The applets on my panel are just favourite applications, like Thunderbird, Firefox, LibreOffice Writer, etc. (See attachment.)

One other question - is there a way I can make an individual application icon on the doc smaller? For some reason, one (from an application not in the repositories) is larger than the others. It's the red "T" - you can see it in the attachment.

By the way, left me compliment you on the Cinnamox-Rhino theme. It is one of the nicest themes I have seen anywhere!

[smurphos]

Hi,

Yep - unfortunately Cinnamon doesn't provide a way to have user over-rides of the cinnamon.css, (unlike the GTK3 / Controls part of the the theme which you can overiride any theme by adding css to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css), so any tweaks have to be applied to directly to the theme in use.

So if all your shortcut's on that panel are in a panel-launchers applet you can increase the spacing between the icons by increasing the vertical padding (currently 3 px) in

Code: Select all

    .panel-launchers.vertical .launcher {
      padding: 3px 0; }

If they were grouped-window-list pinned apps it would be in

Code: Select all

  .panel-left .grouped-window-list-item-box {
    padding: 3px 0; }

To test your edits, briefly switch to another theme and back again in the GUI or use this terminal command

dconf reset /org/cinnamon/theme/name && dconf write /org/cinnamon/theme/name "'Cinnamox-Rhino'"

[smurphos]

One other question - is there a way I can make an individual application icon on the doc smaller? For some reason, one (from an application not in the repositories) is larger than the others. It's the red "T" - you can see it in the attachment.

Hi, again if it's panel launchers you can edit individual launchers to change the current icon. Right-click edit. Or you can hunt down the icon on the system and edit / modify it directly. What's the application?

By the way, left me compliment you on the Cinnamox-Rhino theme. It is one of the nicest themes I have seen anywhere!

Thank-you and glad you like it - it's my go to as-well and has been for a long time.

[fox]

One other question - is there a way I can make an individual application icon on the doc smaller? For some reason, one (from an application not in the repositories) is larger than the others. It's the red "T" - you can see it in the attachment.

Hi, again if it's panel launchers you can edit individual launchers to change the current icon. Right-click edit. Or you can hunt down the icon on the system and edit / modify it directly. What's the application?

The icon is Softmaker Office's TextMaker 2021, which is currently in beta. Thanks again for your help! The change in padding really makes a difference to the appearance.

[smurphos]

Thanks - you'll probably find the original icon in /usr/share/pixmaps which you could try modifying to and a bit of in-icon padding.