How to install the latest Ubuntu Shell theme under Ubuntu with vanilla GNOME

Question

I've installed the latest 17.10 Ubuntu and then used

sudo apt install gnome-session

to get rid of Ubuntu's modifications, as described here.

Although I prefer to have a vanilla GNOME experience, Ubuntu's new GNOME-Shell theme is very appealing. Unfortunately, I can't find this theme in GNOME Tweaks. The only GNOME-Shell theme that is present there is GNOME's default one.

Does somebody know a convenient way to install Ubuntu's new GNOME-Shell theme?

Solution 1

You may load the default Ubuntu 17.10 shell theme from your home directory. To do that follow the steps below.

1. Create a directory, say MyTheme either in ~/.themes or in ~/.local/share/themes. (You may create ~/.themes or ~/.local/share/themes if they don't exist.)
2. Create another directory inside MyTheme called gnome-shell.
3. Create an empty document in this gnome-shell directory and name it gnome-shell.css.

4. Open this gnome-shell.css in a text editor and add the following line

   @import url("/usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/ubuntu.css");  
   

5. Install and activate the User themes extension from here.

6. Install the indispensable (GNOME) Tweaks (if not installed already) by running

   sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool 
   

7. Launch Tweaks, go to Appearance section and click on the drop-down box next to "Shell theme". MyTheme should appear in the drop-down list. Select it.

Solution 2

If you want to use the new Yaru gnome-shell theme shipped with Ubuntu 18.10, then gnome-shell.css file (refer to this answer) should contain

@import url("/usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/Yaru/gnome-shell.css");

Comments

[pomsky]

Output of ls /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme?

[DMT]

xxx@yyy:~$ ls /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme gdm3.css ubuntu.css gnome-shell.css ubuntu-high-contrast.css ubuntu-checkbox-focused.svg ubuntu-toggle-on-intl.svg ubuntu-checkbox-off-focused.svg ubuntu-toggle-on-us.svg ubuntu-close-window.svg

[Anwar]

Awesome. This is what I was looking for. Changing the session's theme. I collected the css from ubuntu in my debian and created gnome-shell.css in Ambiance theme directory. The theme didn't appear in gnome-tweak-tool but I used gsettings to set the theme.

[Anwar]

But gnome-terminal didn't followed the theme color. Could you add that method too?. Some components didn't change though. The slider of the volume icon didn't change

[pomsky]

@Anwar I think I don't understand completely. Terminal theme/colour should not be dictated by the GNOME shell theme, but by the applications theme (GTK+). Perhaps you're looking for something like this? And for the components like slider, checkbox etc. you need to get the image files (.svg files) also from the /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/ directory along with the .css file. So better to copy the whole directory. Since you're copying this from one system to another, you may have to edit the .css file so that it contains correct paths to those .svg files.

[Anwar]

Yeah. Sorry I wasn't clear enouogh. It's when you select "Use color from system theme", terminal colors follow system theme's scheme. That's not working.