knowledge-base/KB/Linux/Desktop/Theming Qt and Gtk.md

creation date	tags
2022-01-08	note qt gtk linux archlinux

Based on ArchLinux Wiki.

Unify Qt5/Qt6 and GTK2/GTK3/GTK4 design.

Of course, this depends on your personal preference. If you pick

• GNOME the default Adwaita (dark) theme is very pleasing (also applied to Qt and Gtk3) and
• for all other scenarios, Arc (Darker) looks great, but of course, depends on your personal preferences.

Theme

To unify look in GTK and Qt applications GTK and Qt applications need to be themed in the same way. To have the most unified look afterwards, it's recommended that you look up if your theme of choice supports GTK2, GTK3, GTK4, Qt5 and Qt6. The Qt variants with kvantum or an explicit Qt theme for it.

On ArchLinux most kvantum themes are in the AUR and prefixed with kvantum-theme-....

Qt applications

In any environment (your shell env and probably envvars of environment.d) source, e.g. .zshenv, set export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="qt5ct" (which is also forward compatible with qt6ct).

Variant	Plain Adwaita	Backported Adwaita (Gtk3) + Qt5/6	Any other theme, example Arc Darker
Required packages	qt5ct qt6ct adwaita-qt5 adwaita-qt6	qt5ct qt6ct adw-gtk3 kvantum kvantum-theme-libadwaita-git	qt5ct qt6ct kvantum kvantum-theme-arc arc-gtk-theme
Instructions  in qt5ct / qt6ct	Set Adwaita as theme	Set kvantum or kvantum-dark as theme	Set kvantum or kvantum-dark as theme
Instructions in Kvantum	-	Select KvAdwaita or KvAdwaitaDark	Select KvArcDarker

Depending on your personal preference, you can also instruct qt5ct / qt6ct to use GTK style dialogs.

Gtk 2 and Gtk 3 applications

Set your proper theme via respective utilities like nwg-look (also works for KB/Linux/Desktop/sway) and/or GNOME Tweaks for GTK 4.

If your theme doesn't support Gtk 2, you might need to look for the correct theme first!

Font

Noto Sans Regular (11) seems great. Set it everywhere:

• qt5ct for Qt 5
• qt6ct for Qt 6
• nwg-look and/or GNOME Tweaks for GTK

In addition, you can adapt your fontconfig/ folder contents. See KB/Linux/Desktop/Fonts.

Icons

papirus-icon-theme looks great, but you should also install some fallbacks.

papirus-icon-theme
arc-icon-theme
adwaita-icon-theme

Set it everywhere:

• qt5ct for Qt 5
• qt6ct for Qt 6
• nwg-look and/or GNOME Tweaks for GTK

Application specifics

• rofi: Dark
• In Firefox install theme and use
• In Thunderbird disable/enable system theme if changes are not applied
• JetBrains products
  • Default or Dracula Official
  • Don't set anything in Appearance fonts
  • Change editor to Noto Mono with 15px and 1.3 line height
  • Visual Studio Code
    • Default or Dracula Official
    • 16px font size everywhere
  • Alacritty
    • base16-atelier-forest
• GNOME Terminal
  • Prefer dark