I want to start using automatic dark theme option added in Plasma 6.5, previously utilizing Koi to change colours and wallpaper. I avoided creating entire theme because it seemed to hard and confusing.
Automatic dark theme utility form Plasma demands switching between global themes, however no graphical option to create or edit one is present. From the documentation I found, creating a custom theme requires installing an app that doesn’t exist or editing .svg files manually (which, I believe, applies to Plasma style and not other theme elements). What I think I should do is copy a theme manually, replace icons and wallpaper, change relevant metadata and then sideload it… though I don’t see an option to install theme locally either, so maybe I would have to first publish it?
There must be an easier way to do that? What am I missing? I’d greatly appreciate the help.
There is no currently a way to creat a global theme from the current configuration withing the systems settings.
However there is a workaround :
There is a dev app named Plasma Global Theme Explorer shiped with the package plasma-sdk that allow to generate a global theme from the current configuration.
To access it you need to install the plasma-sdk packages with
sudo ndf install plasma-sdk
or
sudo pacman -S plasma-sdk
or whatever the package manager that is shiped with your distribution.
Note that it’s a dev oriented tool so there is some useless stuf from a end user stand point like adding a e-mail. Hopefully it’s possible to bypass by simply adding random stuff in it
It should behave like you expect to, there is no root access requiered and you can delete it when you want.
Thanks! This is not nearly as straightforward as it should be for a casual user, but with this app it’s not hard either. Here’s a quick guide.
Install plasma-sdk. Note that at least on Fedora this package lacks AppStream metadata, so you have to install it through terminal.
With you light theme active, open Global Theme Explorer and click “New”.
Fill in the data. All fields have to be filled, but you don’t have to provide real name, e-mail and website. New theme based on current settings will be created and saved locally.
Switch to your dark mode and repeat last step.
You can now use Plasma’s automatic dark mode! Providing Plasma detects your dark theme as being dark. And that you don’t want the wallpaper to be changed.
So I guess I should research how to combine two images into a single dynamic wallpaper… There’s Dynamic Wallpaper Engine, but it was created for Plasma 5 and it seems to be abandoned now. It allows you to have a wallpaper change multiple times a day, which I don’t know how it’s compatibles with Plasma’s switching between light and dark wallpaper. There are also some tools for Gnome which might or might not be compatible with KDE… hmmm.
The real issue with this is that it doesn’t necessarily create a ‘global’ theme. It just saves your basic theme settings. Your icon theme, and many other settings are not saved.