6

I am trying to get a uniform dark theme going on Ubuntu 19.10, and am not a big fan of the light notifications.

One can change the shell theme to obtain dark notifications, but I don't know a theme that fits well with Yaru-Dark.

Any suggestions?

Rasmus
  • 8,375

2 Answers2

7

Original post (updated below):

Ideally there would be a Yaru-dark shell theme that is changeable in gnome-tweaks.

Issues being tracked here and here.

For now, you can build the Yaru-dark shell theme from source. I have only tested this on a fresh install of 19.10.

Building and installing Yaru-dark gnome-shell theme from source

  1. Install git
sudo apt update && sudo apt install git
  1. Clone the yaru repo and checkout the latest release.
git clone https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru.git
cd yaru/
git checkout $(git describe --tags $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1))
  1. Change $variant variable in gnome-shell.scss from light -> dark
sed -i 's/light/dark/g' gnome-shell/src/gnome-shell.scss
  1. Install build dependencies for building yaru. Note: If you receive an error here, review this.
sudo apt build-dep yaru-theme
  1. Build yaru
meson build
cd build
ninja
  1. Install the newly built theme into the user themes directory
mkdir -p ~/.themes/Yaru-dark/gnome-shell
cp gnome-shell/src/* ~/.themes/Yaru-dark/gnome-shell
  1. Now use gnome-tweaks to change the shell to Yaru-dark from Default. This can be found under Appearance if the User themes extension is enabled. You may need to install gnome-shell-extensions and reboot to get User themes to show up under Extensions in gnome-tweaks.

Update:

A new merge into master builds both the light and dark shell themes and allows them to be installed alongside each other. See here for merge details.

The updated steps are just the normal dev build instructions as described here.

Good guide and reference for this post here.

Cody Hodges
  • 86
2

You could try the 'pop' theme. 

sudo apt install pop-gnome-shell-theme

I think 'pop-dark-slim' works well with the 'Yaru-dark'

Edit: I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 and I believe the theme was available in the repositories, but if it's not there on your system then just run this command first:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:system76/pop

Note: You might want to remove the newly added repository after the installation:

sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:system76/pop

(You can also build it from the source [GitHub])

nom4d
  • 56
  • Is this theme available in the standard repositories? If not, please explain what has to be done to run the command you've provided. – DK Bose Jun 19 '19 at 14:52
  • @DKBose - It should be available in the standard repository. If it's not there, then you can get it from GitHub – nom4d Jun 19 '19 at 15:01
  • Have you checked whether it's available on your system? I couldn't find it in my 19.04 repos. Have you tried the GitHub route on your system? Please mention your system? Is it vanilla Ubuntu? – DK Bose Jun 19 '19 at 16:29
  • @DKBose Thanks, I edited the answer with some additional info. I installed the theme some time ago and I was pretty sure that it was available from the standard repo, but I might be wrong – nom4d Jun 20 '19 at 09:17
  • 2
    Hey @nom4d!!! Welcome to [ubuntu.se]. I am sort of against using that repository on an standard Ubuntu system. The packages generally installed from that repository are customised for Pop!_OS which may cause some features which you expect on Ubuntu to limit, for example, see this question. I have a fully updated 18.04 installation. But as soon as I add that PPA, 34 packages needs to be upgraded. I've shared details of those packages here. – Kulfy Jun 20 '19 at 12:10
  • I'll rather suggest removing repository (if you use it) as soon as you install the required package. Or download debs instead with its dependency if standard Ubuntu repositories aren't able to fix dependency issues. If you're interested, I have shared some of my thoughts regarding that PPA on Ask Ubuntu General Room – Kulfy Jun 20 '19 at 12:10
  • @Kulfy Thanks for the suggestion. I've updated the answer. Frankly, I didn't realise how 'dangerous' it could be to leave the repository on my system. But now when I think about it makes sense. The repository contains software for a different OS! – nom4d Jun 20 '19 at 17:49
  • @nom4d Thank you for considering that. I'll leave my comment undeleted, so that future readers can have a look on that too. Thanks :-) – Kulfy Jun 20 '19 at 18:21
  • I can switch to yaru-dark on my ubuntu 19.10 by using the "gnome-tweaks-tool". However the notifications are still light. It does not seem to solve the problem :-/ – user152037 Feb 02 '20 at 17:22