how to change background of nautilus in ubuntu 14.04

Question

As the question goes, How can I change the background of nautilus in Ubuntu 14.04 ??

I have already tried dconf-editor, gtk-tweaker, gnome-tweaker. They change the color of some parts of some pannel but not the background of nautilus in icons view.

Solution 1

You can edit the gtk-main.css or nautilus.css files.

I recommend you to try this under your ~/.themes and not system-wide. You may either change the background color of nautilus only or the base theme as a whole, which affects a lot more programs. In this example I will change the background color in the default Ubuntu Theme "Ambiance" (in Ubuntu Gnome use the folder Default instead) from white (#ffffff) to a light grey (#D8D8D8). Feel free to pick any other color.

For comparison how it looks like in the beginning:

Create a copy in ~/

Create your ~/.themes directory and copy the original Ambiance theme to it.

mkdir ~/.themes
cp -R /usr/share/themes/Ambiance ~/.themes/

Change the background color for the whole theme

If you want to change the base color for the whole theme, edit the base_color (Hex notation #??????) in gtk-main.css. This changes the background color of other applications (eg: gedit) as well.

nano ~/.themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/gtk-main.css

Change this line:

@define-color base_color #ffffff;

For this one:

@define-color base_color #D8D8D8;

To save the changes in nano, press Ctrl+O,Enter then Ctrl+X.

Effect:

Change the background color for nautlius only

If you want to change the background color for nautilus, edit nautilus.css.

nano ~/.themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/apps/nautilus.css

Add this lines to the beginning of the file.

 NautilusWindow * .view {
     background-color: #D8D8D8; 
}

To save the changes in nano, press Ctrl+O,Enter then Ctrl+X.

Effect

To see the changes you can restart nautilus, logout login or restart your machine.

Solution 2

Roman's solution will work, but actually there's no need to copy the entire Ambiance theme to your .themes directory. Instead, you can simply create a file ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and put any changes you want there, such as

NautilusWindow * .view {
 background-color: #D8D8D8; 
}

Then restart Nautilus. The definition in your gtk.css file will override the theme defaults and you'll see the background color you wanted.

Solution 3

Just change the system appearance to dark:

System -> Appearance -> Dark

Nautilus will inherit the color scheme.

Comments

[Rinzwind]

As far I know the dconf method does no longer work as of version 3.8 :(

[Rinzwind]

Hmm those do not change the nautilus background.

[Vahid Nateghi]

Is there a reference to which I can refer to for further change in theme? (specially nautilus) for example how can I change color of icon text, or the color of the icon when selected, etc.?

[thorstorm]

Some themes do change the Nautilus background. I'm using one that does.

[Roman Raguet]

@VahidNateghi: Not exaclty a list, but you can view the structure of the default themes in ubuntu (Ambiance), and here you have a link to a basic gtk3 theming guide worldofgnome.org/making-gtk3-themes-part-1-basics and this link is for gnome developer for GtkCssProvider (selector, widget classes) developer.gnome.org/gtk3/3.4/GtkCssProvider.html .hope this helps.

[Caleb]

@VahidNateghi I was able to successfully change the color of the icon text by adding color: #FFF; to the above styles

[Patrick Da Silva]

Is there somewhere where I can see how to change the other parameters? Some kind of list where I could try playing with the hexa-decimal colors? I managed to do your solution but I want to learn how to change the rest of the colors, not just the background one. +1

[MERose]

In 16.04 the file has been moved to /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/gtk-main.css.

[pretzlstyle]

What about changing the color of the side panel as well?

[pretzlstyle]

What about changing the color of the side panel?

[Angsuman Chakraborty]

This is the simplest solution and should be the selected answer.