Ubuntu – How to install a GTK theme on Ubuntu 15.04

15.04themes

With previous versions of Ubuntu, to install a new theme it would suffice to copy it to the ~/.themes folder. If I do the same on Ubuntu 15.04 the theme never shows up the Unity Tweak Tool or the Appearance tab of the Settings tool.

What is the correct procedure on Ubuntu 15.04?

Update: I have tried various things following the suggestions from Sadi below. I am able to install themes with these two procedures:

  1. Directly from a PPA (e.g. apt-get install);

  2. Compiling from source and then issuing something like sudo make install.

So far no theme copied directly into ./~themes or /usr/share/theme ever appears in the tweak tools; irrespective of folder permissions.

Best Answer

The themes listed in System Settings... > Personal / Appearance / Theme are usually none other than Adwaita, Ambiance and Radiance that come with Ubuntu.

You can install other GTK themes (including Window themes) via some PPAs or manually.

PPAs usually install such themes under /usr/share/themes but you can also manually install themes by also copying files to ~/.themes (or ~/.local/share/themes) as well as copying them to /usr/share/themes using root privileges as PPAs do, and in either way you should be able to see and select them in Unity Tweak Tool or Ubuntu Tweak.

Note: It might also be a good idea to create a symlink for /root/.themes to have GTK2 apps use the same theme also when running as root if you put your theme at ~/.themes.

Lately Ubuntu has begun using the unity sub-folder under a theme for window control buttons (Close/Minimize/Maximize) but it still requires the metacity-1 sub-folder containing at least a file named metacity-theme-{NUMBER}.xml - otherwise the theme will not be listed.

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