How can I change GTK3 themes from XFCE or Openbox?

Question

Running Ubuntu 12.10, the problem I'm having is that when running XFCE or Openbox as my desktop I cannot seem to switch the gtk theme away from the default Ambiance.

I've tried gtk-theme-switch, lxappearance and several others to no avail. No matter what I do the gtk apps keep their Ambiance theme. I even tried logging into the regular Unity desktop and changing it from there with the tweak tool but when I log back into a different desktop everything is still using Ambiance. This is crazy, there must be a way to change them.

Solution

I've had this problem as well. Look in you home directory; do you have a .gtkrc-2.0.mine file? If not, create it and edit the .gtkrc.2.0 file. Add this line:

include "/home/*yourusername*/.gtkrc-2.0.mine"

Inside the .gtkrc-2.0.mine file have this:

gtk-xft-hinting = 1
gtk-xft-hintstyle = hintfull
gtk-xft-rgba = rgb

Comments

[Michael Moreau]

I installed with sudo apt-get install xfce4 so that might be the problem.... But what about openbox? I used to be able to switch gtk2 themes with lxappearance or gtk-chtheme but now they refuse to change the gtk theme in openbox, whether it's a gtk2 or gtk3 theme.