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As the question goes, How can I change the background of nautilus in Ubuntu 14.04 ??

I have already tried dconf-editor, gtk-tweaker, gnome-tweaker. They change the color of some parts of some pannel but not the background of nautilus in icons view.

d a i s y
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Vahid Nateghi
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4 Answers4

19

You can edit the gtk-main.css or nautilus.css files.

I recommend you to try this under your ~/.themes and not system-wide. You may either change the background color of nautilus only or the base theme as a whole, which affects a lot more programs. In this example I will change the background color in the default Ubuntu Theme "Ambiance" (in Ubuntu Gnome use the folder Default instead) from white (#ffffff) to a light grey (#D8D8D8). Feel free to pick any other color.

For comparison how it looks like in the beginning: Natuilus css file

Create a copy in ~/

Create your ~/.themes directory and copy the original Ambiance theme to it.

mkdir ~/.themes
cp -R /usr/share/themes/Ambiance ~/.themes/

Change the background color for the whole theme

If you want to change the base color for the whole theme, edit the base_color (Hex notation #??????) in gtk-main.css. This changes the background color of other applications (eg: gedit) as well.

nano ~/.themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/gtk-main.css

Change this line:

@define-color base_color #ffffff;

For this one:

@define-color base_color #D8D8D8;

To save the changes in nano, press Ctrl+O,Enter then Ctrl+X.

Effect: Background color for the whole theme

Change the background color for nautlius only

If you want to change the background color for nautilus, edit nautilus.css.

nano ~/.themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/apps/nautilus.css

Add this lines to the beginning of the file.

 NautilusWindow * .view {
     background-color: #D8D8D8; 
}

Natuilus css file

To save the changes in nano, press Ctrl+O,Enter then Ctrl+X.

Effect

Background color for nautilus only

To see the changes you can restart nautilus, logout login or restart your machine.

Community
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Roman Raguet
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  • Is there a reference to which I can refer to for further change in theme? (specially nautilus) for example how can I change color of icon text, or the color of the icon when selected, etc.? – Vahid Nateghi May 15 '14 at 05:38
  • @VahidNateghi: Not exaclty a list, but you can view the structure of the default themes in ubuntu (Ambiance), and here you have a link to a basic gtk3 theming guide http://worldofgnome.org/making-gtk3-themes-part-1-basics/ and this link is for gnome developer for GtkCssProvider (selector, widget classes) https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/3.4/GtkCssProvider.html .hope this helps. – Roman Raguet May 15 '14 at 15:45
  • @VahidNateghi I was able to successfully change the color of the icon text by adding color: #FFF; to the above styles – Caleb Apr 13 '16 at 21:13
  • In 16.04 the file has been moved to /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/gtk-main.css. – MERose Jan 21 '17 at 15:07
  • What about changing the color of the side panel? – pretzlstyle Feb 15 '18 at 22:30
7

Roman's solution will work, but actually there's no need to copy the entire Ambiance theme to your .themes directory. Instead, you can simply create a file ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and put any changes you want there, such as

NautilusWindow * .view {
 background-color: #D8D8D8; 
}

Then restart Nautilus. The definition in your gtk.css file will override the theme defaults and you'll see the background color you wanted.

Adam Dingle
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  • Is there somewhere where I can see how to change the other parameters? Some kind of list where I could try playing with the hexa-decimal colors? I managed to do your solution but I want to learn how to change the rest of the colors, not just the background one. +1 – Patrick Da Silva Dec 20 '16 at 16:44
  • What about changing the color of the side panel as well? – pretzlstyle Feb 15 '18 at 21:33
3

Just change the system appearance to dark:

System -> Appearance -> Dark

Nautilus will inherit the color scheme.

Mateja Petrovic
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0

The best way to change colours is to install a theme.

So first install Unity Tweak Tool.

Then create a ~/.themes folder

Then find and download your preferred theme. This is an example. Unzip the themes in the folder created.

Open Unity Tweak Tool and under themes choose the one just installed.

To Do
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