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I want to change my network monitor applet to this alt text icon.Currently my network monitor applet has this icon alt text.I am using ubuntu 10.04,how to do this?

karthick87
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3 Answers3

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There is a very simple way to do what you wish without root privileges or even overwriting anything. As you know, your icon themes are located in /usr/share/icons. Simply go to your icon theme directory and locate the icon(s) you wish to replace, taking note of their locations.

In your home folder there is a hidden directory called .icons. In Nautilus you can hit Ctrl+H to see it. Any icons you put in this directory will be treated as icons are treated in /usr/share/icons. The only catch is that icons places in the .icons folder available only for that user. Also programs run as superuser, like Synaptic, will not reflect any changes in theme-ing added to your home folder.

A way to solve that is to symbolically link ~/.icons (and ~/.themes if you want) to the corresponding folders in /root.

If you wanted to do that you could put this in terminal:

sudo ln -s ~/.icons /root

That will make your user themes globally available without needing root privileges at all. But that's beyond the scope of the question and I'm babbling.

I will use the Mint-X icon theme and the application Blender as an example.

  • When I navigate to /usr/share/icons/Mint-X/apps/48 I see a Blender icon. But I would like to replace it with a custom icon.
  • I then go to ~/.icons and recreate the same directory hierarchy, staring with "Mint-X":
  • ~/.icons/Mint-X/apps/48
  • Then I put my custom Blender icon in the new "48" folder.
  • And finally, I open the Appearance Preferences Window, select a different icon theme, and reselect Mint-X so it reloads (sometimes it happens live and you don't even need to reload the theme).

Now instead of the Blender icon in /usr/share/icons/Mint-X/apps/48 I see the one in ~/.icons/Mint-X/apps/48 used in apps and menus that use the 48x48 sized Blender icon.

Keep in mind that everything is case sensitive and must match each other exactly for this trick to work!

There a few other ways to do this without overwriting anything in an icon theme, but this is by far the simplest. Also, just putting your custom icon in ~/.icons often works (the Twitter client Hotot is an example).

I recommend learning what the index.theme files do. Those files control what places your system looks to decide which icons to use, what to name the theme, etc. Open one up in Gedit and have a look, it's pretty simple!

The way I do it is by keeping a custom theme in ~/.icons that I always use (to make sure panel icons are the correct colors, mostly). I make up an index.theme file (you can copy one rather than write a whole new one, but make sure your folder locations correlate!) and just have it "inherit" the new theme I want.

So if I wanted to use the Elementary icon theme instead of the Faenza-Dark one I would change the line

Inherits=Faenza-Dark

to

Inherits=Elementary

So in turn, by inheriting Elementary I will also inherit whatever Elementary inherits, but my icons will always come first.

Hope that was helpful, time for bed!

Deadite81
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  • Can you try to format your answer with bold, emphasis, code and maybe bulleted lists and headings. Because for now it is very hard to read. – Nyamiou The Galeanthrope Dec 02 '10 at 08:04
  • I am using Faenza-Dark theme icon sets..And this is my network monitor applets in Faenza-Dark theme(http://imgur.com/NuWNj.png) i want to replace these icons with this one(http://imgur.com/TdDwl.png) But i am confused i have many icons in Faenza-Dark icon sets.What should i do now? – karthick87 Dec 02 '10 at 13:18
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This helped me:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35662

Hope it works out for you.

Saifallah
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  • I am not using the Human icon pack.Am using the tropical icon pack. – karthick87 Nov 28 '10 at 10:53
  • Yeah I noticed, I meant to give you this link just so that you could check the concept, I think you should just find your theme folder there & search for the icon responsible for the network applet. – Saifallah Nov 28 '10 at 10:55
  • I have found but the problems is all those icons are in .svg format.The icon that i am going to replace is in .png format.What should i do now? – karthick87 Nov 28 '10 at 11:51
  • @karthick87: GIMP, imagemagick. – Sid Nov 28 '10 at 12:17
  • Can some explain me step by step? – karthick87 Nov 28 '10 at 12:31
  • http://www.fileformat.info/convert/image/svg2raster.htm

    This might be an easy solution. Give it a shot, I didn't try it.

     – Saifallah Nov 28 '10 at 14:09
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    Replacing the icon is the same, whether you use .svg or .png. You can overwrite the .svg with a .png icon file. svg files are better at scaling than png. – charlie-tca Nov 28 '10 at 16:30
  • Where should i replace it?Coz inside my icon folder i can see a lot of folders(actions,appa,categories,devices,emblems,mimetypes,places & status) – karthick87 Nov 28 '10 at 19:12
  • @charlie-tca : No, we can't overwrite a .svg with a .png. We can remove the svg and use a png instead. – Vish Dec 02 '10 at 13:48
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The icon name in use there is the 'network-transmit-receive' .

So what you need to do is, Name your favorite icon as 'network-transmit-receive.png'/'network-transmit-receive.svg' depending on what format you have in your theme. Either replace it or just add one if your theme does not have the 'network-transmit-receive' icon.

Other icon names used, at times, in the applet are the "network-idle", "network-receive", "network-transmit" .

Vish
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