GUI does not follow Dark-mode in GTK3

[lemonadecbc]

GTK3 mode for GUI does not change to dark color scheme even though Gnome theme is set as Dark. QT5 mode, though does follow dark mode, which is expected result.

Steps to reproduce
Change Gnome to Dark theme and switch to GTK3.

Expected behavior
Normally, Gnome applications follow Dark mode when Gnome has been set to use Dark theme.

Additional information

• Audacious version and interface (Qt / GTK / Winamp)

v4.4 and earlier. GTK interface.

• Operating system and version

Debian Trixie (Testing)

• Desktop environment

Gnome 3

[radioactiveman]

Which theme do you use? And which GTK 3 applications behave as expected?

There is a GTK setting called "gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme” but I think this is not what we should enable in Audacious itself by default. If I understand it correctly, Audacious would then use the dark theme even if the desktop environment setting is using light mode (but the theme has a dark theme).

[sr79368142]

I'm also in this situation, I'm on the latest version of windows and I'm not sure exactly why!

[arigit]

running into the same issue.
Ubuntu 24.04 set to Dark style. Theme: shell theme: WhiteSur
Audacious flatpak, latest version. Wayland.

Audacious fails to detect the dark theme.

Is there a setting or command line switch to force audacious to use the dark color set?

[radioactiveman]

If you use Audacious with GTK 3, then https://github.com/orgs/audacious-media-player/discussions/1527 may help.

[arigit]

@radioactiveman that helped quite a bit! Without this Audiacious for some reason defaults to adwaita:light - it does not pick up my GTK4 theme (either light or dark modes, just noticed)

env GTK_THEME=Adwaita:dark

With this at least it turns to dark mode, less of an eye sore. All other apps I use including flatpaks (e.g. libreoffice, darktable, firefox etc) pick up my shell theme (WhiteSur dark) with no issue. Something seems missing in audacious apparently.

I noticed that the GTK_THEME env variable is no longer set in my environment and clearly not used by any of my other apps, flatpak and non-flatpak

p.s. I tried variations of
env GTK_THEME=WhiteSur:dark to no avail

[radioactiveman]

GTK_THEME=WhiteSur-Dark should be correct in your case.

You can identify the correct name by the directory name of the theme (in /usr/share/themes) and its index.theme content.

[arigit]

@radioactiveman thanks for the tip!
I tested with other themes in /usr/share/themes, it doesn't seem to work, only Adwaita:dark works for some reason.

e.g. I have a Yaru-red folder there, and starting with Yaru-red or Yaru-red:dark does not change the default theme that pops up (that seems to be Adwaita light)

The WhiteSur theme is installed in ~/.themes, and it doesn't seem to be picked up either, I tried all the variations I could think of
env GTK_THEME=WhiteSur-Dark-nord flatpak run org.atheme.audacious

with no luck.

ls .themes/
WhiteSur-Dark-nord/       WhiteSur-Dark-nord-xhdpi/  WhiteSur-Dark-solid-nord-hdpi/   WhiteSur-Light-nord/       WhiteSur-Light-nord-xhdpi/  WhiteSur-Light-solid-nord-hdpi/
WhiteSur-Dark-nord-hdpi/  WhiteSur-Dark-solid-nord/  WhiteSur-Dark-solid-nord-xhdpi/  WhiteSur-Light-nord-hdpi/  WhiteSur-Light-solid-nord/  WhiteSur-Light-solid-nord-xhdpi/

[radioactiveman]

Then I am out of ideas as well. 🙂 Could this be related to Flatpak?

[arigit]

Yes it was related to flatpak.
Finally this fixed the problem: I had to use the name of the theme folder as @radioactiveman suggested and I also needed to add a flatpak override so the audacious flatpak could access my theme folder where the theme is deployed:

env GTK_THEME=WhiteSur-Dark-nord flatpak --filesystem=~/.themes/ run org.atheme.audacious

Thanks for the guidance!