A quick guide to creating your first Plasma Style
One of Plasma's features is the ability to theme desktop elements using ScalableVector Graphics (SVGs). This means there is no need for theme authors to knowC++ or any other programming language to create a great looking theme. Theyneed only use common graphics tools like Krita,Inkscape, GIMP, etc. Depending on your prowess with such tools, a greatlooking Plasma Style can be created in under an hour.
A video tutorial is available to learn how to edit Plasma Styles.
Creating a Plasma Style in 7 Easy Steps
Step 1: Using an existing theme
Copy and rename an existing Plasma Style folder. The new folder name shouldbe the name of the theme. Themes provided by your distribution are stored in /usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/
,while user-installed themes go in ~/.local/share/plasma/desktoptheme/
.You can also find Plasma Styles on the KDE Store. Edit the metadata.json
filein the theme folder to match your theme name.
See Theme Metadata if you need help.
Important
Prior to KDE Frameworks 6, themes used a metadata.desktop
file instead of metadata.json
.
# Create theme directory in home if it doesn't existmkdir -p ~/.local/share/plasma/desktoptheme# Copy default theme to home directory so we can modify itcp -r /usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/default ~/.local/share/plasma/desktoptheme/# Rename themecd ~/.local/share/plasma/desktopthememv ./default ./mytheme# Edit the relevant fields in the metadata.json# with your theme information and credits.# Remove any translation names or descriptions# (entries like Name[fr] or Description[zh_CN]).
Note
The default/
theme is the base Breeze
theme with all the default SVGs. breeze-light/
and breeze-dark/
only have a colors
file and a pair of metadata files and inherit everything else from the default/
theme.
Step 2: Open a file
Open the SVG file associated with the Plasma element you would like to theme(panel background, clock, etc.) in an SVG editor (e.g. Inkscape).
See Theme Location, Structure and Definition to understand how Plasma Styles are organized, and the Theme Elements Reference to understand what each SVG file does.
Step 3: Edit each element
Each SVG file may have several elements (objects with element ID = left
,right
, top
, topright
, center
, ClockFace
, etc.). Modify existing elements OR deleteand create replacement elements. Elements can be any SVG primitive or object group.
See SVG Elements and Inkscape to understand how to edit Plasma SVG elements.
Hint
You can embed raster images as SVG elements if you creatively prefer raster editorslike Krita, GIMP, etc. Remember to embed each image instead of linking (Inkscape:Effects -> Images -> Embed All Images).
Step 4: Use an Inkscape extension
To make renaming of the theme elements easier, it is possible to use an Inkscapeextension provided byKSvg. See Inkscape Extensions for how to install it.
Step 5: Review element IDs
Make sure that the element ID for each new element is correctly set.
Hint
In Inkscape you can check the element ID for each element by right-clicking on theelement and choosing Object Properties.
Step 6: Edit hint elements
Add or remove any element containing a hint ID you desire. It doesn't matter how the element looks,just that elements with IDs matching the hint elements either exist ordon't exist. See Background SVG Format for adescription of available hint elements.
Step 7: Save the SVG file.
Repeat steps 3 - 6 for any other Plasma element for which you would like tocreate a new theme.
Testing the Theme
If you have not already done so, copy your new theme folder to
~/.local/share/plasma/desktoptheme
.Choose the theme in System Settings -> Appearance -> Plasma Style or edit your
~/.config/plasmarc
to point to the new theme. This may require restarting Plasma.Carefully check the appearance of all new theme elements.
If you created separate themes that do not require compositing/desktop effects (SVGs in the
opaque/
folder), rememberto test your theme with compositing turned off (this can be toggled with the keyboard shortcutAlt+Shift+F12
on X11).
Note
The opaque/
folder is only relevant for themes on the Plasma X11 session, as the Wayland session does not allow to turn off compositing. See Opaque Folder for details.
When you update the theme, you need to battle with Plasma's caching. To make sureyou are running the latest version of your theme after updating its files, clear the cache:
rm -r ~/.cache/plasma*
Then restart the Plasma Shell. The easiest way to do so is by opening KRunner with Alt + Space
and running:
plasmashell --replace
Theme Colors
You can provide a Plasma color scheme that will allow text, selected backgrounds andother items to blend well with your theme by supplying a
colors
file in your theme folder.See thecolors
file in thedefault
theme for an example.If the
colors
file is omitted, Plasma will use the current Plasma system colors.
Important
Theme SVGs will not be colorized unless they contain the hint-apply-color-scheme
element.)
Hints and Tips
Even a pixel or two out of place can make a difference over hours of use. It may notbe obvious at first glance but the user may intuitively pick up that something is "justnot right" and give up using your theme.
In Inkscape, turn off stroke scaling when elements are resized. Inkscape may defaultto scaling the stroke of an element when changing its size. This may show up in the renderedPlasma Style as thin, barely-there lines that you can't seem to get rid of.
If you prefer raster editors like Krita and GIMP, create your theme in theseprograms first, then import them into Inkscape (drag and drop of the files works fine). Ifyou're working on a background with multiple elements, like
widgets/panel-background.svg
orwidgets/background.svg
, crop the raster image into the different elements (top, bottom, right,etc.) and save as separate files before importing into Inkscape.Don't forget to embed imported raster images. By default Inkscape will import theseas linked images that will not show up in Plasma (to embed the images, go to Effects ->Images -> Embed All Images).
Remember that the border elements of backgrounds (
top
,right
,bottom
,left
) are tiled if thehint-stretch-borders
element is not present in the SVG.Remember that the center element of backgrounds are stretched if the
hint-tile-center
element is not present in the SVG.To control how much colorization will be applied by Plasma when using the
hint-apply-color-scheme
element, make sure the color (HSV) Value/Intensity is closer to0
or255
for less colorization, and closer to127
for more colorization. So, for example, tokeep shadows from being colorized, use a color (HSV) Value/Intensity of0
.When testing the theme, if it looks like portions of a multi-element SVG are missing(missing borders, etc.), check the SVG again to make sure the element IDs are correct.
Do not use more advanced SVG features since they will not be rendered properly. If youwant to add blur or something similar, consider pre-rendering to PNG, and then importing thePNG into the final SVG file.
Perform this quick sanity check for background SVGs to help troubleshoot annoying linesand gaps between elements:
topleft
,top
andtopright
elements should have the same heighttopright
,right
andbottomright
elements should have the same widthbottomleft
,bottom
andbottomright
elements should have the same heighttopleft
,left
andbottomleft
elements should have the same width