I often find myself switching between ColorSchemes depending upon dark/bright places. KWin provides nice Invert plug-in, but it simply inverts every colour. Not feasible to work, particularly while browsing or watching videos. As far as I know there is no shortcut way to change colorschemes. Hence I created a small hack (named it kcss) to do that. Works pretty well overall. Its a small command line program. Here’s how to to use it -
$ kcss list # list all available color schemes $ kcss current # Color scheme currently in use $ kcss switch <colorschemename> # change colorscheme $ kcss toggle # toggle between Dark and Light colorscheme
For toggle, it reads a small configuration file called .kcss-profilerc. A sample is given below -
[Dark] ColorScheme=Obsidian Coast [Light] ColorScheme=Oxygen [Default] Profile=Dark
Creating Shortcut - Since we now have a command line interface to switch colorschemes, we can easily create a custom shortcut from System Settings > Shortcuts & Gestures. Set action parameter as “kdss toggle” and key-sequence of your choice.
Source Code -
Next – Next thing that I would like to add is to switch/toggle Konsole colorscheme and try to fix some problems (if possible) where you have to restart applications to let colorschemes take effect properly. I don’t have in-depth knowledge of KDE, so I’m not sure if its doing anything bad yet. So take backup of configuration files before you use it and let me know about bugs/fixes.
Good, but how do we compile this?
I just pushed README with compile instructions.
Wow, that was fast. Thanks!
Hi,
Thanks for a very handy (and unique I think) program. I had ‘newbe’ trouble with git and then cmake – it has never worked for me- but this time I persevered and after installing g++ and lib’something-with-a-5-in-it’, it compiled and ran fine.
I noticed that from konsole the schemes with spaces in the name needed quotes (fancy that), while quotes in .kcss-profilerc stopped the toggle operation from working.
Now to try to leap from your excellent starter and develope a ‘choose from list’ app.
BTW: coincidence or what – my wireless (wicd) connection died ’til reboot but although rare I doubt it’s connected (to kcss!).
Dell Inspiron 1720 Mint Kubuntu KDE 4.8.1.
Cheers
Hi!
I just found this article as I too was looking for a way to easily change color theme in KDE. Thanks, it helped me alot!
I’ll upload a Bespin theme + 2 color schemes + instructions to switch colors on KDE-look.org very soon and I’d like to upload your very kcss program: may I?
If yes, then please tell me which license to use, else, may I link the theme to your post?
Thanks
Cheers, Moviuro
Feel free to use it. The code is under BSD License. I forgot to put copying file, code however mentions BSD License.
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That’s what I was looking for since years. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to “enhance” the small tool as plasmoid and publish it officially?
Thanks a lot, Vishesh!