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How to make Unity launcher change colour over time ?

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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1 Answers1

2

Intruduction

The script bellow loops over hex values of colors incrementally. It can be started at login or can be ran manually when one wishes so

Getting the Script

One can copy the source code from this post directly or through github using the following steps:

  1. sudo apt-get install git
  2. cd /opt ; sudo git clone https://github.com/SergKolo/sergrep.git
  3. sudo chmod -R +x sergrep

The script file will be /opt/sergrep/unity_launcher_rainbow.sh

To make the script start automatically on every login, refer to How do I start applications automatically on login? . Provide /opt/sergrep/unity_launcher_rainbow.sh(full path) as the command

Script Source

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
###########################################################
# Author: Serg Kolo , contact: 1047481448@qq.com 
# Date: March 20,2016
# Purpose: Color changer script for Ubuntu Unity launcher
# Written for: 
# Tested on: Ubuntu 14.04
###########################################################
# Copyright: Serg Kolo , 2016
#    
#     Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software is hereby granted
#     without fee, provided that  the copyright notice above and this permission statement
#     appear in all copies.
#
#     THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
#     IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
#     FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL
#     THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
#     LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
#     FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
#     DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
ARGV0="$0"
ARGC=$#
main()
{
  renice -n 10 $$ > /dev/null
  num=0;
  while true
  do 
    set_unity_launcher_color   $(printf '%6.6xff' $num)
    num=$(($num+510)) 
    if [ $num -eq 16777215 ]
       then num=0
    fi
    sleep 0.05
    done
}

set_unity_launcher_color()
{
  schema="org.compiz.unityshell" # relocatable schema
  path="/org/compiz/profiles/unity/plugins/unityshell/" #must end with /
  key="background-color"
  hex_string=$1
  gsettings set "$schema":"$path" "$key"  "'#$hex_string'"
}
main
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Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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  • You can also add the script to cron daemon to run it periodically. – Danibix Apr 09 '16 at 20:54
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    @Danibix The script kind of has to loop over a large number of color shades, so with cron it would probably be hard to see changes because shades are so similar. That's why I've made sleep 0.05 to make it loop reasonably fast. You have a good idea, though :) – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Apr 09 '16 at 21:02