The following text describes how to change the default light theme to a dark theme. This is just an example, feel free to adjust the appearance to your taste.
The image below shows the default light theme after installation.
This is the result after applying the steps described here.
Change Workspace Appearance
Open the Workspace Appearance window
Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> System Settings -> Workspace Appearance
Go to Desktop Theme
Select Oxygen and Apply the change
(Optional) Remove blue glowing task items
Adjust Oxygen Details
Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> System Settings -> Workspace Appearance -> Desktop Theme -> Details (Tab)
Select Oxygen
Change Theme Item -> Task Items from Oxygen Task Items to Air Task Items
Apply changes
Change Application Appearance
Open the Application Appearance window
Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> System Settings -> Application Appearance
Go to Colors
Select Obsidian Coast
Apply Changes
Qubes VM Manager should now look like the image below.
Note: Changing the Window Decorations from Plastik for Qubes will remove the border color and the VM name. The problem with Plastik for Qubes is that it does not overwrite the background and text color for Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons. The three buttons are therefore hard to read.
The following text describes how to change the default light theme to a dark theme. This is just an example, feel free to adjust the appearance to your taste.
The image below shows the default light theme after installation.
This is the result after applying the steps described here.
Change Appearance
Open the Appearance dialog
Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> Appearance
Change Style to Albatross
Note: The black appearance theme Xfce-dusk makes the VM names in the Qubes OS Manager unreadable.
(Optional) Change Window Manager Style
Open the Window Manager dialog
Qubes Menu -> System Tools -> Appearance
Change the Theme in the Style Tab (e. g. Defcon-IV). All available themes work.
Almost all Qubes VMs use default applications based on the GTK toolkit. Therefore the description below is focused on tools from the Gnome Desktop Environment.
The advantage of creating a dark themed Template VM is, that each AppVM which is derived from the Template VM will be dark themed by default.
Note: Gnome-Tweak-Tool crashes under Archlinux. A workaround is to assign the AppVM to another TemplateVM (Debian, Fedora) which has Gnome-Tweak-Tool installed. Start the AppVM and configure the settings. Shutdown the machine and switch the TemplateVM back to Archlinux.
Start VM
Note: Remember that if you want to make the change persistent, the change needs to be made in the TemplateVM, not the AppVM.
Install Gnome-Tweak-Tool
sudo dnf install gnome-tweak-tool
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
(Only AppVM) Stop TemplateVM and start AppVM
Add Gnome-Tweak-Tool to the Application Menu
Right-click on VM entry in Qubes VM Manager select Add/remove app shortcuts
Select Tweak Tool and press the > button to add it
Enable Global Dark Theme
Debian only
cd ~/.config/
mkdir gtk-3.0
cd gtk-3.0/
touch settings.ini
Start Tweak Tool from the VM application menu and set the Global Dark Theme switch to on
(Optional) Modify Firefox
Note: Firefox uses GTK style settings by default. This can create side effects such as unusable forms or search fields. One way to avoid this is to add the following line to /rw/config/rc.local:
sed -i.bak "s/Exec=firefox %u/Exec=bash -c 'GTK_THEME=Adwaita:light firefox %u'/g" /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
Restart VM or all applications
Manually works for Debian, Fedora and Archlinux.
Start VM
Note: Remember that if you want to make the change persistent, the change needs to be made in the TemplateVM, not the AppVM.
Enable Global Dark Theme
cd ~/.config/
mkdir gtk-3.0
cd gtk-3.0/
touch settings.ini
Add the following lines to settings.ini
[Settings]
gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme=1
Follow steps 6 and 7 in: Using Gnome-Tweak-Tool