Linux Customization

There’s a few different things to customize, most of these you can simply download more by clicking “Get New…” on the given page in the “Colors & Themes“. 3 main settings effect the vibes of your PC:

• Plasma Style
  • This effects things like the theming of the taskbar, desktop widgets, start menu, etc.
  • (user) ~/.local/share/plasma/desktoptheme/
    (system) /usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/
• Window Decorations
  • This is the border around each window, including the title bar and the exit/min/maximize buttons.
  • (user) ~/.local/share/aurorae/themes/
  • Details on editing the config here
• Application Style
  • You can choose the visual style many native desktop apps will look like, like the buttons, dropdowns, and other menu stylings
  • Your Context Menu (right click menu) is also based on this
  • This can’t be found and manually edited like the others, but you can use kvantum to theme this section further. You also can’t “Get New” to download more like the rest.

Other important settings to personalize your PC:

• Colors
  • You can select a main color, but also custom basically every single color for things in the OS, included their inactive and disabled states
  • (user) ~/.local/share/color-schemes/
    (system) /usr/share/color-schemes/
• Icons
  • You can change the logos of all the default apps, many popular apps, and icons without many native apps.
  • (user) ~/.local/share/icons/
    (system) /usr/share/icons/

All of these can be saved and changed via Global Settings. If you want quick shortcuts to them from your ~/Documents folder, then run this script:

mkdir ~/Documents/'Theming Locations'
cd ~/Documents/'Theming Locations'

ln -s /usr/share/color-schemes 'Color Schemes - Sys'
ln -s ~/.local/share/color-schemes 'Color Schemes - User'

ln -s /usr/share/icons 'Icons - Sys'
ln -s ~/.local/share/icons 'Icons - User'

ln -s /usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme 'Plasma Style - Sys'
ln -s ~/.local/share/plasma/desktoptheme 'Plasma Style - User'

ln -s ~/.local/share/aurorae/themes/ 'Window Decor - User'

For anything you want to manually customize/make a new theme for, best practice is to make a copy of theme you want to edit. Otherwise, your changes will be reverted when the project gets updated and your system auto-updates.

1. Make a copy of the folder. If it a system theme, you should copy it to the corresponding user theme folder.
2. Rename it and add something like “-custom” or “-fork” at the end, or entirely change it if making a new theme.
3. Enter that folder and look for a “metadata.desktop” file
4. Edit the “X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name” line* to match the name of the folder from step 2.
5. If there’s a “metadata.json” file, edit the “Id” line* to match the folder name as well.

*You can change the other lines if you care to, but they aren’t important as far the system uniquely identifying it.

Now you can make changes to the config or svg files to make custom themes.

This one is relatively simple. First navigate to the following directory and find your active theme. Then enter it’s folder.
~/.local/share/aurorae/themes
Find and open a text file named after the theme and has properties related to the theme within it.

Then, depending on the change you want to make, modify the value for the given property. Changes are made as soon as you save, any new windows opened will reflect your changes. Most are pixel sizes, though some are RGBA colors, with a few extra.

Just a note that some themes may come with graphical options to change these in KDE’s settings, but not all, like centering titles is a common aesthetic choice. Most just give you the option to change the size of the window control buttons though, and KDE will just let you choose how thick the window border is.

You will also notice SVG files in that theme folder for your theme, so if you want to make any visual changes to your theme, you can do that with any SVG editor, like Inkscape, Boxy SVG, etc.

I haven’t tried this myself, but I will add more info here in the future if I do. I assume they update in real time after saving the SVGs, applying to newly opened windows.

This could allow you to take a theme you like and simply alter color elements, etc.

1. Go to ~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids, and make a copy of the widget folder you want to edit & add “-custom” to the end (or something else to differentiate it).
   • If it’s a system widget and not user-downloaded, then it will be located in: /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids. Copy this into folder into the above location before renaming it.
2. Open the folder and then metadata.json and edit the "Id" line to be the same as the folder name.
3. Then open contents/ui/main.qml
4. In the first set of { } brackets, add this line under the id:
   • Plasmoid.backgroundHints: "NoBackground"
5. Save & logout. Background will be gone on login.