For GTK there is this cool project, ASTAL:
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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unixporn
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TUI is the only truly satisfactory way.
You use arch, don't you?
n-no
*n-*no
🤨
Theming GTK2 and GTK3 applications was simple. Applying custom themes to GTK4/libadwaita apps is unsupported. You can enable dark mode and change the accent colours, but that's about it.
KDE/Qt supports theming out of the box, but theming apps outside KDE is painful. You have to juggle with several utilities (qt5ct, qt6ct, Kvantum manager) and many environmental variables. For example, Krita doesn't respect the theme you set using qt5ct unless you set KRITA_NO_STYLE_OVERRIDE=1. Using qt6ct I can make Okular (and other Qt6 apps) use the style that emulates Windows 95, but I can't make them use a custom colour palette, so they stick out.
The worst thing you could do is try to make GTK and Qt apps look consistent.
Granted that seemingly everyone is abandoning GTK after they’ve forced an impossibly rigid styling system down everyone’s throat, that should be an easy decision
Also note how they are so eager to drop X11 support. IMO wayland is not stable and full of flaws by now and X11 isn't going anywhere soon. Dropping X11 support will be sure to hurt them.
Any major maintainer has given a whole plethora of reasons why support is being sunset, all of which are abundantly clear. The wayland flaws argument is 5 years old at this point
What did improve since 5 years? The remote desktop is still pretty shit, which X11 is simply better than Wayland.
Ok, guess i'm abandonimg GTK completely. It's not that i lose THAT much.
Waiting for the day the question becomes:
Qt or Cosmic?
☺️
Tf is cosmic?
New desktop environment being made by the Pop_OS devs.
Desktop environment AND desktop app toolkit/library, like GNOME + GTK or KDE + Qt, not just a desktop environment.
Both can be customized, and a combination of both is most customizeable
But I prefer QT
Qt6 is a lot more customisable than GTK 4, but you probably won't notice if:
- You're using GTK 2/3
- You're using a boring flat theme
However, if you're using Flatpaks, GTK is possibly better.