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Building Celestial: A GTK Theme Journey
(thoughts.greyh.at)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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I have found the gtk theming to be extremely confusing. It's too complicated IMHO, or I'm missing something. I wanted to make the titlebar/window manager bar darker (with white text maybe) on this theme https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/115201547347227741 and I couldn't figure out how to ONLY change the titlebar. I want the various elements (e.g. window bar, menu bar, icon bar etc) to have slightly different colors you see, so I can differentiate what's what. I can't use dark themes because I can't see where the boundaries are of each window/thing. My eyes just can't differentiate dark theme elements. It's a mystery to me how people can use these themes. :o)
Honestly Gtk theming has extremely poor documentation and you need to look closely at existing themes to figure out all the CSS selectors you need to define. It is definitely possible, but can require some trial and error.
Not all themes are created equal, but the titlebar is actually one of the easier things to theme.
That being said, it really depends on your DE, and if the apps you are using are Qt or Gtk 3/4.
I really wish they had better guides online, but that was the main reason I spent time working on Celestial. To finally have the consistency i wanted, and untangle the theming mess.