Changing theme or icons not working

I’m not sure if my manjaro is XFCE. I installed it as such but I am now using AwesomeWM, but I’ll post this to this subsection.

I am trying to change my theme and folder icons and system tray icons (if that’s what they’re called, anyway here’s the images of what I mean: imgur(DOT)com/a/DjVAkeb ), because they’re ugly as hell and I’ve customised my system to my liking in other areas.

I’ve installed different themes and icon packs. I am certain they’re correctly installed. I’ve installed them with pacman and some manually and extracted them to the right folders and I can see them in my GUI (more of that later) but I don’t know how to apply them via terminal and haven’t found anything from the internet. So I’ve tried to install them from the GUI (settings → appearance → icons/themes and then I click on the icon/theme I want. The problem is, nothing changes. That is, they dont apply. I can switch between themes all I want and there’s no delay whereas there previously (when not using awesomeWM) was a slight delay when the theme/icon was applied.

What’s wrong?

Here’s my system info:

System:
  Kernel: 5.10.15-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
  Desktop: awesome 4.3 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire A315-42 v: V1.03 
  serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: PK model: Sleepy_PK v: V1.03 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde 
  v: 1.03 date: 05/30/2019 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 25.2 Wh condition: 25.2/37.0 Wh (68%) 
  volts: 8.3/7.7 
  model: PANASONIC 0x41,0x50,0x31,0x36,0x4D,0x35,0x0008 type: Li-ion 
  serial: <filter> status: Full 
Memory:
  RAM: total: 5.8 GiB used: 2.61 GiB (45.0%) 
  RAM Report: 
  permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required. 
CPU:
  Info: Quad Core 
  model: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx bits: 64 
  type: MT MCP arch: Zen/Zen+ note: check rev: 1 L2 cache: 2 MiB 
  bogomips: 33550 
  Speed: 1277 MHz min/max: 1400/2100 MHz boost: enabled 
  Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1277 2: 1224 3: 1225 4: 1224 5: 1225 6: 1226 
  7: 1224 8: 1227 
  Flags: 3dnowprefetch abm adx aes aperfmperf apic arat avic avx 
  avx2 bmi1 bmi2 bpext clflush clflushopt clzero cmov cmp_legacy 
  constant_tsc cpb cpuid cr8_legacy cx16 cx8 de decodeassists 
  extapic extd_apicid f16c flushbyasid fma fpu fsgsbase fxsr 
  fxsr_opt ht hw_pstate ibpb irperf lahf_lm lbrv lm mca mce 
  misalignsse mmx mmxext monitor movbe msr mtrr mwaitx nonstop_tsc 
  nopl npt nrip_save nx osvw overflow_recov pae pat pausefilter 
  pclmulqdq pdpe1gb perfctr_core perfctr_llc perfctr_nb pfthreshold 
  pge pni popcnt pse pse36 rdrand rdseed rdtscp rep_good sep sev 
  sev_es sha_ni skinit smap smca sme smep ssbd sse sse2 sse4_1 
  sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 succor svm svm_lock syscall tce topoext tsc 
  tsc_scale v_vmsave_vmload vgif vmcb_clean vme vmmcall wdt xgetbv1 
  xsave xsavec xsaveerptr xsaveopt xsaves 
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Picasso vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: amdgpu 
  v: kernel bus ID: 05:00.0 chip ID: 1002:15d8 class ID: 0300 
  Device-2: Chicony VGA WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
  bus ID: 1-1:2 chip ID: 04f2:b5e0 class ID: 0e02 serial: <filter> 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.10 driver: loaded: amdgpu,ati 
  unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa 
  resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz s-dpi: 96 
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics (RAVEN DRM 3.40.0 
  5.10.15-1-MANJARO LLVM 11.0.1) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.4 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio 
  vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
  bus ID: 05:00.1 chip ID: 1002:15de class ID: 0403 
  Device-2: AMD Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor 
  vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: N/A bus ID: 05:00.5 
  chip ID: 1022:15e2 class ID: 0480 
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 05:00.6 chip ID: 1022:15e3 
  class ID: 0403 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.15-1-MANJARO 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 2000 
  bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8168 class ID: 0200 
  IF: enp3s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network 
  Adapter 
  vendor: Lite-On driver: ath10k_pci v: kernel port: 2000 
  bus ID: 04:00.0 chip ID: 168c:0042 class ID: 0280 
  IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: <filter> 
  IP v4: <filter> type: dynamic noprefixroute scope: global 
  broadcast: <filter> 
  IP v6: <filter> type: noprefixroute scope: link 
  Device-3: Lite-On Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 Bluetooth type: USB 
  driver: btusb bus ID: 1-4:3 chip ID: 04ca:3015 class ID: e001 
  WAN IP: <filter> 
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Lite-On Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 Bluetooth type: USB 
  driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus ID: 1-4:3 chip ID: 04ca:3015 
  class ID: e001 
  Message: Required tool hciconfig not installed. Check --recommends 
RAID:
  Message: No RAID data was found. 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 238.47 GiB used: 32.52 GiB (13.6%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: SK Hynix model: HFM256GDJTNG-8310A 
  size: 238.47 GiB speed: 15.8 Gb/s lanes: 2 rotation: SSD 
  serial: <filter> rev: 80002C00 temp: 29.9 C scheme: GPT 
  Message: No Optical or Floppy data was found. 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 224.77 GiB used: 32.52 GiB (14.5%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 label: N/A 
  uuid: 52965578-71dc-4418-abd7-a7a14ba39714 
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 299.4 MiB used: 312 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 label: N/A uuid: 06CC-073B 
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 8.8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) 
  priority: -2 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3 label: N/A 
  uuid: 0ef469cd-3992-4682-a6bd-8b53e55073af 
Unmounted:
  Message: No Unmounted partitions found. 
USB:
  Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 4 rev: 2.0 
  speed: 480 Mb/s chip ID: 1d6b:0002 class ID: 0900 
  Device-1: 1-1:2 info: Chicony VGA WebCam type: Video 
  driver: uvcvideo interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s 
  chip ID: 04f2:b5e0 class ID: 0e02 serial: <filter> 
  Device-2: 1-4:3 info: Lite-On Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 Bluetooth 
  type: Bluetooth driver: btusb interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 
  speed: 12 Mb/s chip ID: 04ca:3015 class ID: e001 
  Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 4 rev: 3.1 
  speed: 10 Gb/s chip ID: 1d6b:0003 class ID: 0900 
  Hub-3: 3-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 2.0 
  speed: 480 Mb/s chip ID: 1d6b:0002 class ID: 0900 
  Hub-4: 4-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 1 rev: 3.1 
  speed: 10 Gb/s chip ID: 1d6b:0003 class ID: 0900 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 65.4 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu 
  temp: 65.0 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 248 Uptime: 30m wakeups: 1 Init: systemd v: 247 
  target: graphical.target Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0 Packages: 1517 
  pacman: 1496 flatpak: 11 snap: 10 Shell: Zsh v: 5.8 
  running in: urxvt inxi: 3.3.01 

Here’s the critical info:
Desktop is awesome 4.3, kernel is 5.10.15-1MANJARO x86_64
GPU: AMD Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U

Thanks in advance.

Maybe this will help:

xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Net/IconThemeName -s icon_theme_name

Obviously, you have to replace icon_theme_name with a valid name, which can be found from the list of installed icon themes:

ls -l /usr/share/icons/

(or in any other directory you installed icon themes, like ~/.local/share/icons/)

I consulted reddit (r/linux4noobs) as well, installed lxappearance and I can now change icons and themes with that.