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rgomes

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 43

[SOLVED] Gnome 3.16 - How to theme it?

I used to have a modification to the standard gnome-shell theme: I added a picture to the login/lock screen background by modifying gnome-shell.css at /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme
This file is, however, gone, and I would like to add my background image back.
I would also like to know if it is possible to go back to the old black color scheme, I much preferred it (this is a minor gripe, but I would prefer generally darker colors, and definitely don't like the blue contours that much, but I could get used to them, just rather not have to) - I assume it would involve modifying the same files that would involve changing the image.

Last edited by rgomes (2015-04-10 21:51:52)

gnunn

Member

Registered: 2013-10-21

Posts: 96

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome 3.16 - How to theme it?

The themes are now in binary files (gresource), you would need to either unpack the gresource file, make your change and put it back together or use git to get the original source and make a new theme. Like you, there are some tweaks I prefer such as changing the colors and removing the annoying line under the titlebar that was added to gtk+ 3.16. A third option that might work but I haven't tried yet, is to create a new theme but import the CSS from the gresource file using the CSS import command. I'm not sure if this works outside the resource bundle though but here's an example from the existing Adwaita source code:

@import url("resource:///org/gtk/libgtk/theme/Adwaita/gtk-contained.css");

I ended up going the git route and creating a new theme, but it's not as trivial as before since both the GTK and gnome-shell themes now use SASS as a pre-processor so you need to get SASS working on your system as well.

To get the source code for the gnome-shell, use the following git command:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-shell

To get the source code for the Adwaita GTK theme, you need to clone the GTK repository:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/gtk+

Last edited by gnunn (2015-04-10 18:33:20)

rgomes

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 43

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome 3.16 - How to theme it?

Thank you so much! That explains why I couldn't find the file.
I built the theme by getting it from github, modifying the files, and building it, and it worked well.
It didn't seem hard to extract the gresource file, it would just be a tiny bit complex to create the xml for it.
Thank you!

The wiki should be updated at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GD … ound_image

Last edited by rgomes (2015-04-10 21:53:40)