12 Material-Inspired Icon Themes for Your Linux Desktop

What is a Linux desktop if it ain’t filled with eye candy? Here we have a list of Material inspired/flat-feeling Themes and Icons to beautify the GUI of your system so you may customize it to your hearts’ content.

While there are more than a few themes and icons that will effectively function with your Linux system, I’ve scoured the web to make this compilation particularly because I’ve grown a liking for all things flat in relation to the looks and feel of any operating system.

Also given that it’s an ongoing trend, (from Microsoft’s Windows 10 to the Android operating system and even Apple’s iOS) in the software industry as a whole, you might as well bring the flat feel to your Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, or whatever distribution you may be rocking.

1. Paper Theme and Icons

The Paper Icon Theme is a modern icon theme that is based on the Material Design guidelines and comes with two variants light and dark icons, which are designed to be simple, elegant, and easy to use. They are also highly customizable, so you can change the colors, shapes, and sizes to match your preferences.

The Paper Icon Theme is compatible with a wide variety of desktop environments, including GNOME, KDE Plasma, and Xfce. It is also available for a variety of Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and Arch Linux.

To install the Paper Icon Theme, you can use the following PPA, which provides frequent updates of changes, bug fixes, and additions.

$ sudo add-apt-repository -u ppa:snwh/ppa
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install paper-icon-theme

If you’re on Arch, however, you can get it from the AUR (Arch User Repository) package that provides both the Paper icons and GTK theme.

Once you install the theme and icons, you can use GNOME Tweak Tool to customize the desktop environment such as wallpaper, theme, and icons.

$ sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

Unfortunately, there aren’t any repos for other distribution types, however, there is the option to compile from source.

It’s noteworthy that Sam Hewitt is also responsible for the Moka theme and icons available on Linux and Android.

2. Tela Icon Theme

Tela Icon Theme is a popular icon theme for Linux desktop environments, which is used to change the appearance of icons used throughout the user interface, giving the desktop a unified and visually appealing look.

The Tela Icon Theme is known for its modern and flat design, often characterized by clean lines and simplicity. It supports a wide range of applications and provides icons for various categories, such as system utilities, applications, folders, and more.

You can install the theme from the Snap Store оr by running:

$ sudo snap install tela-icons
$ sudo snap connect [other snap]:icon-themes tela-icons:icon-themes

3. Luv (Formerly Flattr)

Lüv is yet another GTK-based theme with the basic material-inspired icons that are visible all through the operating system, however, Luv is mainly an icon set and has no theme bundled with it.

Luv is hugely undone as it lacks quite a number of icons but overall impressive nonetheless.

To install Luv icon theme, you need to clone the repository using the following command:

$ git clone https://github.com/Nitrux/luv-icon-theme.git

Next, move the Luv folder under /usr/share/icons for all environments or ~/.icons for GTK-based environments or ~/.local/share/icons for Plasma 5, and finally select the theme in the Settings.

4. Mono Dark Flattr

Mono Dark Flattr is yet another icon theme for Linux desktops that was forked from Flattr (NitruxSA/flattr-icons) and Ultra-Flat-Icons (steftrikia).

The aim is to combine the latest flat design trend with Ambiance/Mono Dark themes (still widely spread among GNOME Fallback Session (Classic) users on recent Ubuntu systems).

Reiterating the statement, Mono Dark Flattr combines Luv (Flattr) and Ultra-flat icons from two distinctly different projects to give you the best of both worlds.

To install this icon theme, you can clone this repository into /usr/share/icons/mono-dark-flattr-icons and then set with gnome-tweak-tool the icon theme to Mono-dark-flattr-icons.

$ https://github.com/hai-nguyen-van/mono-dark-flattr-icons.git

5. Vimix Icon Theme

Vimix Icon Theme is another icon suite that is also based on Paper-Icon-Theme and Material Design and comes with a variety of different color schemes to choose from with the size, shape, and transparency to match your needs.

What’s more, Vimix gives you a combination of 14 different colors to choose from for your file manager via an extension, and like the aforementioned theme and icons, it works with desktop environments using GTK technologies.

$ git clone https://github.com/vinceliuice/vimix-icon-theme.git
$ cd vimix-icon-theme/
$ ./install.sh

Once you install the theme and icons, you can use GNOME Tweak Tool to customize the desktop environment such as wallpaper, theme, and icons.

6. Flat Remix Icon Theme

Flat Remix Icon Theme is yet another icon theme derived from a combination of already existing projects and it’s easily one of the better and complete suites on this list that features support for the most common DEs.

To install this theme, you can use the following PPA, which provides frequent updates of changes, bug fixes, and additions.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:daniruiz/flat-remix
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install flat-remix

7. Arc GTK

Arc GTK theme is a beautiful material icon theme designed to be the perfect match for GTK 3, GTK 2, and GNOME Shell which supports GTK 3 and GTK 2-based desktop environments like GNOME, Unity, Budgie, Pantheon, Xfce, MATE, etc.

Its icons feature heavy use of crisp lines, simple clean colors, and a lot of influence from flat design. It’s available in 3 variants.

The Arc GTK theme is a lightweight and modern theme that is available for a variety of Linux distributions.

$ sudo apt install arc-theme         [On Debian, Ubuntu and Mint]
$ sudo yum install arc-theme         [On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Rocky/AlmaLinux]
$ sudo emerge -a sys-apps/arc-theme  [On Gentoo Linux]
$ sudo apk add arc-theme            [On Alpine Linux]
$ sudo pacman -S arc-theme           [On Arch Linux]
$ sudo zypper install arc-theme      [On OpenSUSE]    

8. Boston Icon Theme

Boston is a minimalist icon theme designed to give desktops an appearance that merges flat and material design. It focuses on a reduced colour palette, basic shapes, and visual hierarchy.

To install the Boston icon theme on Ubuntu, you can clone the repository, move the icon theme directory to the /usr/share/icons directory and change the default icon theme:

$ git clone https://github.com/thecheis/Boston-Icons.git
$ sudo mv Boston-Icons/ /usr/share/icons/
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme Boston

9. Canta GTK Theme

Canta is a flat material design theme for virtually all Linux desktops. It features a unique take on material design with its lime green, shaded black, and white colors combined with the window control buttons (minimize, maximize, and close) Apple-style i.e. on the left.

To install the Canta GTK theme on Ubuntu, you can use the following steps:

$ sudo apt install git libgtk-3-dev automake autoconf gtk2-engines-pixbuf
$ git clone https://github.com/vinceliuice/Canta-theme.git
$ cd Canta-theme/
$ ./install.sh

Once you install the theme and icons, you can use GNOME Tweak Tool to customize the desktop environment such as wallpaper, theme, and icons.

10. Materia Design Theme

Materia is a Material Design theme for GNOME/GTK desktops, which is customizable using any of its 3 color variants in 2 size options and supports ripple animations.

If you run KDE, Materia KDE is a fork of this project with extra icons and features added.

The Materia theme is available for a variety of Linux distributions.

$ sudo apt install materia-gtk-theme         [On Debian, Ubuntu and Mint]
$ sudo yum install materia-gtk-theme         [On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Rocky/AlmaLinux]
$ sudo apk add materia-gtk-theme             [On Alpine Linux]
$ sudo pacman -S materia-gtk-theme           [On Arch Linux]
$ sudo zypper install materia-gtk-theme      [On OpenSUSE]    

11. Papirus Icon Theme

Papirus is a material and flat design icon theme for Linux, which is a fork of the Paper icon set with tons of new icons and a few extras such as support for KDE colour scheme, folder colour, and hardcode-tray. It s available in 5 variants.

So, that’s all, Folks! How do you feel about these icon themes? Do you have any favourite picks? We hope that this list is a good starting point for your Linux UI makeover.

They have all been tested on different desktop environments including Unity, KDE, Pantheon, Mate, and Cinnamon so you can rest assured that they will function smoothly.

To install the Papirus Icon Theme, you can use the following PPA, which provides frequent updates of changes, bug fixes, and additions.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:papirus/papirus
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install papirus-icon-theme

12. Newaita Icon Theme

Newaita Icon Theme is a simple and elegant icon theme that is designed for Linux desktop environments to provide a consistent and visually appealing set of icons for various applications, system elements, folders, and more.

To install the Newaita icon theme, just clone the repository to ~/.icons or ~/.local/share/icons or /usr/share/icons and finally select the theme in Settings.

Bottom Line

Most of these themes and icons have been tested on different desktop environments including Unity, KDE, Pantheon, Mate, and Cinnamon and they were mostly functional and effective for the most part.

While these themes/icons will make for a great desktop experience, it’s not complete without some nice Material wallpapers to boot – You can download our collection of Material wallpapers (totaling 181), and don’t forget to leave your comments down below!