Every now and then we let you in on some of the finest theme and icon sets because, like many other Linux users, we like to personalize our workstations. An appealing icon set, a well-thought out wallpaper, and an overall artillery of UI components go a long way to defining how well you enjoy using your computer.
If you’re like me but are discouraged by the stress of having to download all those themes you shouldn’t be any longer because I have come across a script that will fetch you over 10 beautiful GTK themes and all you have to do is query Git to get the script and then run it.
That’s right, Install GNOME Themes is a script that downloads, builds, and installs the latest Git versions of 26 popular GTK themes to your Linux desktop!
The themes are downloaded from GitHub and installed in your ~/.themes folder after which you can now apply anyone of your choosing theme using Unity Tweak Tool (on Ubuntu’s Unity Desktop) or GNOME Tweak Tool (on GNOME Desktop).
The themes in the script’s download list include Flat-Plat, Pop, Numix, Arc Red, Vimix, Vertex, among 20 others! And all you need to do if you want the latest updates for any of the themes just run the script again.
The script will download about 108 packages from GitHub when you run it but don’t be worried; this happens because instead of downloading pre-packaged themes, Install GNOME Themes grabs their source code, builds them, and then installs them on your system for you. As cool as that sounds, remember to have enough time and internet data at your disposal before you begin downloading.
Install GNOME Themes in Ubuntu Distributions
Installing and running the script is easy and it is fully compatible with Ubuntu/Debian distros
$ sudo apt install git $ git clone https://github.com/tliron/install-gnome-themes ~/install-gnome-themes $ ~/install-gnome-themes/install-gnome-themes
To run the script, run:
# cd ~/install-gnome-themes # git pull
Getting theme updates is also easy thanks to the script monitoring a cache file in your ~/.themes which helps it download only the theme changes that have been made. If you ever want to re-download everything then deleting this cache file will get you there.
I am sure there are at least 10 themes in among the list of themes Install GNOME Themes provides – you can thank me later.
Are there any similar attractive scripts you know about? Perhaps, one with the option to exclude some themes from the download list – that will be nifty. Add your comments and suggestions in the comments section below.
it install tons of libraries, no themes. how to get rid of those libraries at once?
I think something is wrong with the repo now.
Use synaptic manager to uninstall the unwanted libraries.
Hey there. This looks pretty awesome… but, alas, I’m not using Debian/Ubuntu/etc, I’m using Arc. Is there a way this could be turned into a PKGBUILD and put into the AUR? I’d love to try this out, but I’m obviously unable to do so 🙁
This script installed tons of libraries, however it did not install one theme …
Worst experience i have ever had.
Thanks much! How do you revert/remove/uninstall?
I just tried this and it didn’t install any themes into my .themes folder.
I ran git pull and the output is “already up to date”.
How do I view the themes in my Unity Tweaks? Have I done something incorrectly?
I think to get the best results you should just install GNOME desktop and use the Gnome Tweak Tool
Hello Martins, awesome article. Please can you tell me what combination of desktop environment and theme do you have on machine where you made this screenshot it looks amazing 🙂 Thanks in advance.
Detected GNOME 3.24, GTK .
This script only GTK version 3.18 up to 3.24.
lol