Arch Linux

JackH79

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-06-18

Posts: 663

Website

GTK and icon themes revert to defaults

I know this has been covered in a few threads, but none of the suggested solutions seem to work for me.

I'm running i3, started through a .xinitrc

Problem: Whenever I try to change my GTK theme (with lxappearance or manually by changing the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini files) and/or icon theme, it only takes immediate effect within the lxappearance window, but nowhere else. If I close lxappearance and open it up again, theme is back to Raleigh and the icons are just the basic ones (prob. from the "Low Contrast" set).

Now, the format of the .gtkrc-2.0 and the gtk-3.0/settings.ini (this one without the quotes around the theme names) is definitely correct. I've tried them multiple times manually written by myself and auto-generated by lxappearance.

I have librsvg installed. I have gnome-themes-standard (was suggested in a thread somewhere, don't know why) installed.

I have also tried the symlinking from the ~/.config/gtk-3.0/ to /usr/share/themes/<theme-name>/gtk-3.0/, that was suggested here on the forum.

I have also tried to have the themes in /usr/share/themes/ and/or in ~/.themes/

If I start a GTK3 or GTK2 application through the terminal, I do not get any GTK related error messages (if any appear at all).

Nothing seems to work. Required engines for the themes are installed (and they all work within the lxappearance window).

Any ideas? Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,456

Website

Re: GTK and icon themes revert to defaults

Do you have a GTK2_RC_FILES environment variable set?  If not you can add this line to your .xinitrc:

export GTK2_RC_FILES="$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0"

I just discovered this yesterday myself, it solved a few old nagging problems similar to those you describe.  I don't know much yet about whether this is the best way to set this variable, but it's a start.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

JackH79

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-06-18

Posts: 663

Website

Re: GTK and icon themes revert to defaults

Thanks for your input Trilby, and sorry for the late reply. Had to go outback very suddenly where there's no Internet connection and couldn't check this earlier.

Yes, I already have the "export GTK2_RC_FILES" line in my .xinitrc.
I should've mentioned that.

Anyone any other ideas.