Dark mode in Debian 10 VM

User Support
11

Hi @tvori-dobro I feel your pain. A couple of conclusions I reached after struggling with this for months:

  • If you have gnome-settings daemon running (e.g. Fedora) the config files are ignored (best case) or interfere (worst case) with the settings you make in gnome-tweaks. … so if you want to use gnome settings daemon and gnome tweaks, it’s probably best to just delete the settings.ini and the .gtkrc-2.0

  • I found that my qubes work best without gnome settings daemon (e.g. Debian, Debian-minimal). In that case set the DPI in /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common using Xft.dpi: in the template … and make sure your qubes have both: ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini and ~/gtkrc-2.0. Mine look like this:

settings.ini

[Settings]
gtk-font-name=Ubuntu 10
gtk-theme-name=Adwaita-dark
gtk-icon-theme-name=Adwaita

.gtkrc-2.0

include "/usr/share/themes/Adwaita-dark/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
style "user-font"
{
         font_name="Ubuntu"
}
widget_class "*" style "user-font"
gtk-font-name="Ubuntu 10"
gtk-theme-name="Adwaita-dark"
gtk-icon-theme-name="Adwaita"

I put these files in the /etc/skel of the template so they get created automatically if I create a new qube based on that template.

To make sure QT apps look good too: in the template install qt5-style-plugins, gtk2-engines-murrine and gnome-themes-standard. Then in /etc/environment add these two lines:

QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2
QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1