How long before we have consistent Manjaro theming on Gnome 42?

Because of the landing of Gnome 42, theming in Manjaro has become a mess. The switch to libadwaita makes it impossible to change the desktop theme for the user, unless a proper theme is made available by developers – at least, this is what I’ve understood, correct me if I’m wrong. Also, the fact that some apps now use GTK4 and others are still with GTK3 makes visual consistency very hard to achieve on the system.

The only way I found to have a (almost) consistent desktop is to use the default Gnome theme (Adwaita). But, I’ll be honest, I don’t like it. I want my green Maia look back. So, my question is, how long can we expect to wait before it’s back? I know it doesn’t depend on Manjaro developers (if the libadwaita coloring API is not availiable, that’s not your fault), but maybe you have a sense of how long we’ll have to wait. Is it going to be weeks, months… or more?

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As far as I know, color accents as well as coloring API are planned for GNOME 43. According to GNOME release schedule (google for it, I can’t attach links yet) the first stable version of 43 is planned for September 2022.
The stable GNOME 42.0 was released on March, 12 - it is May, 13 now. So, it took a couple of months for devs to include new stable GNOME into Manjaro update. Thus, I think we can expect Manjaro on GNOME 43 by the end of 2022. I am not sure that it is reasonable for Manjaro devs to customize GNOME right now when they can just wait till 43 - but everything is possible.
Important - I am not in Manjaro team, just assuming things.

I also don’t like the new GNOME 42 looks - lack of theming and custom color accents, the removal of rounded corners from the top panel. Seems there are pretty important changes under the hood, but this new update is quite a disappointment for me as I’m not a developer.

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Thanks, very useful. I had missed the GNOME 43 info. Seems my Manjaro will have to look blue for quite some time, then. But I’ll keep an eye on this issue, in case there will workarounds.

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Install adw-gtk-theme-maia and libadwaita-maia. That covers the apps. We are still working on getting the shell theme updated. These are stop gap measures, when the recoloring api lands we are going to use that and everyone will be able to choose their own accent color.

I’m hoping we’ll get the shell theme working within a week or two.

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I use Manjaro Cinnamon and after the update the themes are a mess. I don’t know how the theming works, so I’m not sure about this, but I think it’s related to your issue, since Cinnamon is based on GNOME. Telegram, baobab, gnome-disk-utility… they all use the default theme now. I know Cinnamon is not officially supported, but does anybody have any idea on how to fix it in Cinnamon? Or where can I ask for help?

I haven’t pushed them to the repos yet, don’t tell anyone…
:shushing_face:

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Turn the night-light on full, everything is green again! :wink:

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To circumvent libadwaita you could add to you “.profile” file:

export GTK_THEME=Name_without_path_of_your_theme

Still: The way gnome/gtk is going is horrible. They are taking away individual theming. One of the main aspects that led me from Windows to Linux over a decade ago.

BTW: gnome-calculator on xfce seems to ignore that setting (works on Ubuntu- residing in a VM)

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The night light does not work after this new upgrade. :wink: :grin: :grin:

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That should be GTK_THEME, shouldn’t it?

It is working fine for me… :thinking:
Do you have auto-login on?

Then again the need for theming is less pressing now that Adwaita doesn’t look terrible anymore and the custom highlight colors are coming. I used to want to theme gnome because Adwaita was simply too ugly, but nowadays I don’t care that much anymore, and my preferred theme is recolored adwaita.

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Although the new gnome is perfectly acceptable, I have been using a Nord theme in the past months & I’ve found the subdued shades, with the sage green variant, really relaxing & easy on the eyes. I had never been more satisfied with the look of an OS.
The standard gnome dark mode is actually a bit harsh compared. So I am hoping theming will become possible again asap.
I was also enjoying learning about theming, so I’d still like this type of hands-on access to be possible.

I use Orchis with Tela and that is (kind) of working.

I don’t seem to be able to get light mode back as I don’t have dark mode controls and that seems to mess things up but better than some others that I’m reading on here.

I can’t seem to get rid of the default background though with is rather annoying.

@tiefling Tested Orchis also and the black version looks nice. Have you found a complementary theming solution for Qt applications? Or are you not using Qt apps in your installation?

@raguse - Not that I’m aware of (but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was possible to do). There’s a package you can add that makes it theme Snap packages so they are consistent - It requires some noodling to set up but I’ve wired it into my setup bash scripts now so it just deals with itself.

I try to avoid QT stuff where possible as they look a bit off - I have a 2 monitor set up with fractional scaling (1 monitor is 4k and the other 2k) and QT does not like that very much ATM (happy to be corrected if that’s been fixed in the last year) I found so I tended to look for alternative apps where possible.

With the colored versions of Qrchis Qt apps get similar looks just not with the underlined color. With the black version I tried materia based Kv themes but it didn’t match. After all I thought stock Gnome is better with Qt apps.
Possibly the creator of Orchis comes up wtih Kv themes that matches the Gnome themes.

He already did. It’s available in the AUR as kvantum-theme-orchis-git.

Thanks @Yochanan ! I 'll check it out.
My previous tests were from github sources, not from AUR, effectively the same plus/minus. A Kvantum Qrchis KDE spin had the transparency which didn’t match with the dark theme.

Looking forward to the Manjaro ISO releases :slight_smile: .

Yes, I’ve fixed my question