The option in the simple preferences of VLC (Interface Tab) to ‘Force window style’ to ‘qt5ct-style’ (in the dropdown menu) no longer works. I’m currency without an ability to toggle any sort of lasting dark mode. The ‘bb10dark’ option (same dropdown menu) results in buggy UI with HUGE buttons, and when I reopen VLC it revert back to the ‘System’s default’ setting.
The QT5 Configuation tool “qt5ct” has a message at top “(!) The application is not configured correctly.” and when I click the “Information” button the dialog box says (emphasis theirs):
The QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME environment variable is not set (required values: qt5ct or qt6ct).
I tried adding QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="qt5ct" to /etc/environment but nothing happens. Do I need to reset PC for that enviorment variable to work? I’m not 100% sure what anything is supposed to be or do here, tbh.
Since Qt5 is generally being deprecated, it may be worth installing qt6ct? I see you are on Xfce but from my fairly limited deep-dives into that DE, it seems it does rely on a fair bit of Qt stuff. (I’ve only been using Xfce on “reserve” machines running Mint, lately).
A possible workaround it to use VLC’s native skinnable interface. Theming capability must be selected via VLC preferences and a theme file must be chosen.
VLC comes with only one default skin in this mode, however, others can be downloaded from VLC Skins.
Should you decide to use these skins, the expected location for the skins to be found in Linux is:
~/.local/share/vlc/skins2/<skin-file>
These skins typically replace all native window decorations.
After recent update for lightdm, system is not applying configuration settings in ~/.profile including: export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="qt5ct" for QT theme
If there is no response to this command
echo $QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME
Forum users have posted 3 different ways to resolve this:
Copy configuration in ~/.profile to ~/.bash_profile
OR
Configure ~/.bash_profile to read ~/.profile
tee -a ~/.bash_profile <<< "[[ -f ~/.profile ]] && . ~/.profile"
OR
create a symlink for ~/.profile to ~/.xprofile
cd $HOME; ln -s .profile .xprofile
pamac info vlc shows dependencies: qt5-base, qt5-svg and qt5-x11extras
The problem is the .profile where this variable was set is not sourced by default anymore. The solution is written from Nikgnomic above. I even made something like a tutorial about this mess.
Paragraph 3. Which is identic with what nikgnomic has written.
Ok interesting, will try to determine what is the most sustainable, least invasive method. I’m trying to set things up so a privacy-conscious 70-year-old can get by, this means not reading anything about (or from) updates. So far the need to process pacnew files is getting in the way of this a bit, is there a full featured media player (with a nice gui) that does playlists, speed changes (min 0.5 speed to 20x for fast forwarding through malformed/streaming files), and that adjusts the volume of tracks based on embedded replay gain metadata added to the files?
If so I may ditch VLC as I do find it buggy
Skins are something I’ve tried but they stripped some basic functionality out, like the ability to arrange media in the playlist iirc.
Me personally i chose the second option from Nikgnomic’s suggestions. I do not think it gets any less invasive than adding one more line to .bash_profile which just restores the old functionality:
It might take some hunting to find one suitable, I agree. Personally, I tend to use SMPlayer (mpv/mplayer) for most use cases, though I still keep VLC for the times I need it.
On Cinnamon, I have the following in ~/.profile export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME="qt5ct"
Then you have to install qt5ct in order to set the theme for the QT applications.
Plus you have to install a style and icon theme to go along with it. I use breeze and breeze-icons.
Thanks @DeLinuxCo , it seems that i have already had that variable set in my ~/.profile file the whole time, so that’s reassuring.
Wrt installing breeze and breeze-icons, even if that was a solution, I wouldn’t opt to do that because breeze is 83Mb and breeze-icons is 77Mb. I can’t justify 160Mb to make VLC dark.
EDIT: Btw I do seem to already have a very working version of Kvantum so if there is a solution that involves using that I’m all ears.
(aside: TIL the playback speed in mpv media player can be changed with [ and ] keys! there is nothing in the UI, just trial and error taught, is there no playlist gui )
Well, with QT/KDE apps running inside a GTK based desktop, you have to install the themes/icons that work with that app. It is not a question of 160MB for VLC, it is 160MB for any or most QT/KDE apps.
You have three choices;
Install the themes and qt5ct and suck up the usage of disc space
Undersetood, thanks @DeLinuxCo for this solution. I may opt to try it in the future if and only if it make qwenview look better also.
So Kvantum, as per my edit above, definitely cannot help? It seems to work perfectly and have the Dark Matcha Theme which seems to look fine and good (from the Kvantum manager at least). I guess I need to understand the how and why I lost the dark theme.
Aha so the environment variable that I felt “reassured” I had active is NOT actually active! Interesting @teo! What does the (. ~/.bashrc) part do?
EDIT: Oh that second line is already in the profile so I add a “# little comment” to clarify what @teo meant.
EDIT 2/3: Until I have a chance to logout and in again, I’ll assume that for this to take effect I’ll need to login again. I tried running the two lines in the commandline but it appears nothing happens. (did not try running as sudo). Do chime in if you can help speed up finding the solution.
EDIT 4: The plot thickens…
New optional dependencies for kvantum
kvantum-qt5: Qt5 style
…is that what I need for the theme to work in VLC?
