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How can I install themes in ubuntu 12.10 ?

For example, how can I install the following themes on ubuntu:

muru
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Levan
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2 Answers2

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You download it, extract it to ~/.themes, and you can use ubuntu tweak tool to select the theme. I will guide you through it with the grayday theme you selected in gnome-look.org.

Just a warning, not all themes work nicely under unity.

  1. Download grayday, and double-click it in nautilus to open it in the archive manager. You will see a folder called "GrayDay".

  2. Drag that folder into your ~/.themes folder. This is in your home directory. You will have to click "show hidden files" (under view). If you still don't see it, you will have to make the directory in your home folder. Just click make new folder and call it .themes.

  3. Download ubuntu tweak tool from here. http://ubuntu-tweak.com/ Just double click the downloaded .deb file and you should be able to install it through the software-center.

  4. Once you have it installed, open ubuntu tweak tool and go to "Tweaks" and click theme.

  5. Select Grayday in GTK theme and Window theme.

It should work.

muru
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Shivang Saxena
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    I don't have a ~/.themes... I'm running 13.10. – Stephen__T Oct 31 '13 at 20:00
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    @ZeroDivide: Then you will have to make it, like mentioned in the post. Go to your home folder, right click->Create new folder and name it ".themes".

    Or, open up your terminal and type: "mkdir ~/.themes".

     – Shivang Saxena Nov 05 '13 at 20:37
  • "/home/casper" where casper is my user name. Is this directory correct? This folder also include ".fonts", right? Thank. – Casper May 23 '14 at 11:26
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    That is correct. Put the theme inside /home/casper/.themes

    If there is no .themes folder, make one.

     – Shivang Saxena May 23 '14 at 22:30
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    4 years later, Ubuntu Tweak has become unsupported. I tried to install it by manually installing the package, but it failed in the end. The link you gave us now redirects to some window manager for OS X. Do you have an alternative? – foxite May 31 '16 at 18:59
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No extra downloaded third party software is needed.

For gnome shell, you can install the gnome-tweak-tool:

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

For Ubuntu unity, you can either install the gnome-tweak-tool or you can use the unity-tweak-tool to change themes:

sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

Download and extract all themes to your ~/.themes directory. Run the following command to create this directory:

mkdir ~/.themes

This directory is hidden, so you must press CTRL + H after you open nautilus to display hidden files if the directory is not displayed.

Once the theme has been downloaded and extracted to your ~/.themes directory, open either gnome-tweak-tool or unity-tweak-tool to select the theme.

mchid
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  • this doesn't work in Ubuntu 16.04 – knocte Nov 27 '16 at 16:50
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    I think I was trying with a theme which didn't have gtk-2.0 or gtk-3.0 folders: https://askubuntu.com/questions/854253/how-to-install-a-custom-gtk3-ubuntu-theme-without-having-to-add-a-ppa – knocte Nov 29 '16 at 05:00
  • @knocte Yes, I believe it needs at the very least gtk3 for Unity on 14.04+ and I think I heard somebody say something about how it needs to have the css files and that is why some gtk<=2 themes don't work. – mchid Nov 30 '16 at 12:30
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    Worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04 and Unity7 (needed to install unity-lens-files package though to run unity-tweak-toll properly). – installero Jan 25 '22 at 16:25
  • @installero Yeah, just a heads up, I assume you got a missing schema error. You can use the apt-file command to search for the needed package sudo apt install apt-file and sudo apt-file update and apt-file search com.canonical.Unity.FilesLens . – mchid Jan 26 '22 at 09:29