Why is Shell theme disabled in Gnome Tweak Tool?

Question

In Gnome Tweak Tool, I'm unable to change the Shell theme:

Hovering over the exclamation mark shows the following tool-tip: Shell user-theme extension not enabled. I'm using Ubuntu 14.10, and have installed gnome-shell-extensions.

Are you actually using gnome shell or are you using ubuntu with unity desktop? — xangua, Nov 04 '14 at 21:19
I'm using gnome shell. I managed to solve the problem myself. See below. — miceagol, Nov 06 '14 at 20:43

score 98 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 06 '14 at 19:08

98

I solved this problem myself, and it was an extremely trivial solution:

Open Gnome Tweak Tool.
Click on the Extensions menu item, and move the User themes slider to On.
Close Gnome Tweak Tool and open it again.
You should now be able to choose a Shell theme in the Appearance menu.

answered Nov 06 '14 at 19:08

miceagol

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If you just installed gnome-tweak-tool, you may need to log out/in before the extensions appear. – reergymerej Nov 29 '15 at 03:06
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Do you know what one should do if there is no slider turn it on? – MadPhysicist Apr 26 '19 at 03:03
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Hello from 20.04 and 18.04... there is no "user themes" slider. – Rabbit May 26 '20 at 11:43
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@Rabbit, you need to install https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/19/user-themes/ . – Alexey Jun 27 '20 at 23:04
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Extension Manager from software center did a trick. – Andrii Krot Feb 02 '22 at 17:25
Thanks @AndriiKrot – J. Willette Jan 11 '23 at 22:11
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What is the "Extensions menu item"? I see no such thing – endolith Feb 06 '23 at 03:39
@Alexey Also here is no extensions menu item... I downloaded the extensions.gnome.org/extension/19/user-themes zip, but where to extract it (in what folder)? There are no instructions given on the website. – Kleajmp Apr 28 '23 at 14:30

score 41 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 10 '17 at 15:34

41

In addition to @miceagol's answer: If you do not see User Themes in the Extensions panel of GNOME Tweak Tool, you may need to install it from extensions.gnome.org. Restart the tweak tool after installing.

edited Jul 10 '17 at 15:34

muru

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answered Jan 11 '17 at 21:25

Timothy C. Quinn

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To do so, one can launch sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions and might need to logout. – JKHA May 07 '20 at 05:41
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I just tested on Ubuntu 20.04 and the apt package did not install the gnome shell extension for Firefox. I still had to go to extensions.gnome.org. I suspect, that you need to do both: the.org installs the browser extension and the apt package installs the system elements. – Timothy C. Quinn May 07 '20 at 15:53

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 25 '16 at 16:34

You can set a theme using Terminal :

 sudo chmod -R 755 /usr/share/themes/Zukitwo
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme "Zukitwo"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme "Zukitwo"
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.user-theme name "Zukitwo"

use a known working default theme like above and it should get you back but this below may be your real nightmare are thems that won't work.Installing themes that don't work LEAVE behind entries and if you click on a failed entry you will break the tweak tool.

Uninstalling a themes not that easy though..No idea how to remove a bad theme from the list in tweak tool.

This is a good answer. Let's stick with the gnome default themes. — ukos, Aug 09 '18 at 09:20
No such schema “org.gnome.shell.extensions.user-theme” — Suzana, Jan 31 '20 at 16:00

Why is Shell theme disabled in Gnome Tweak Tool?

3 Answers3

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