User themes not working for legacy applications since installing adw-gtk-theme or adw-gtk3

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Hello everyone,

I also posted this under the stable update announcement, but thought it deserved a separate thread as others might be searching this as well. If this is not the case, let me know. Then it can be removed.

The update to gnome 42 went smooth. However, I immediately noticed that somehow the apps that were updated to libadwaita were using the vimix-gtk theme. After removing this theme, they used the default libadwaita theme. Legacy applications used the graphite-gtk theme which I had been using. I already had the adw-gtk theme from the AUR from previously checking this out.

Out of curiosity, I installed both adw-gtk-theme and adw-gtk3 from the official packages. I then found out that other themes were no longer working for legacy applications. I then of course wanted to remove these packages, because before installing I used graphite GTK theme and wanted to keep doing that. But I couldn’t remove these packages because they’re dependencies required by manjaro-gnome. I deleted both packages via the terminal with pacman -rdd but even after doing so I can no longer set different themes for the legacy applications, whereas this worked after the update? It does make the adw-gtk theme disappear, but it reverts back to legacy adwaita and won’t apply different themes as I change these in tweaks/tweak-tool.

Interestingly, Firefox and the Gnome Layout Switcher are using the gtk theme for legacy applications, so somewhere Manjaro is overruling something. I’ve tried this via the switcher and checked to extensions, but I can’t seem to find what makes this overrule. Would really like to revert these changes and also don’t see why this rigid implementation was necessary. The stable post says “I suggest installing the adw-gtk-theme from our community repo to make all Gtk applications have a matching theme. In Tweaks, set the Legacy Applications theme to Adw or Adw-dark.” but it could contain a warning that one cannot go back.

Does anyone know how I can revert these changes caused by adw-gtk-theme and/or adw-gtk3 or some other package?

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Not entirely sure what I’ve done. But as I mentioned, I had removed both packages via pacman Rdd. But then I found out I had the legacy adwaita theme. Reinstalled those packages. But got a bit frustrated. So removed them again, but now at the same time and immediately rebooted. Then loaded some different themes while logging in and out.

And somehow I now managed to get my graphite-gtk theme back for all legacy applications. That might not be an answer to a question, but it is a solution for now!

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That’s because Vince symlinks theme files in your Home directory to make the theme work with Libadwaita applications. Remove the files in ~/.config/gtk-4.0/ if you want to use a theme besides one of Vince’s. Graphite is also his theme.

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