How To Install Themes In Linux

Every Linux distribution can be highly customized using the themes that the community has developed for the past many years. I have compiled a good collection of Linux themes in the following two articles.

Today I will show you how to install themes in Linux in the easiest way possible.

How To Install Themes In Linux

To install themes in Linux, you can use Unity tweak tool or GNOME tweak tool. Unity and GNOME tweak tools are available in Software center.

As Ubuntu’s Unity desktop lives up its life, we can no longer use the Unity tweak tool to manage themes on Ubuntu. Though, you can still use GNOME tweak tool to manage or activate the installed theme.

Installing Themes

Extract the theme file that you want to install like below.

After extracting theme file, open terminal and move extracted folder to /usr/share/themes.

$ sudo mv path-of-extracted-theme-folder /usr/share/themes

When you have moved folder, open Unity tweak tool or GNOME tweak tool that we installed above. Click ‘Themes’ in Unity tweak tool or ‘Appearance’ in GNOME Tweak tool and here you have the theme listed that you moved to the themes directory.

Install Themes Using Pling

Pling is a great platform from opendesktop.org for all desktop Linux users. It is a one-stop-shop for people who want new themes for their desktop.

There is a large collection of artwork, themes, icons, apps, add-ons, and music & videos. Download the .Appimage from the official website and launch the app.

If you do not know how to open .appimage files in Linux, check out the following article –

How to open appimage in Linux

Once you launch the app, you’ll have a user-friendly interface.

Pling
Pling

You can select from the thousands of Linux themes & icons. Everything is categorized nicely. To install any theme, just click the install button and it’ll download and install automatically. You can now use GNOME tweak tool to activate it or use the Pling’s download folder to activate it.

Install theme from Pling
Install theme from Pling

It’ll take a few seconds to download and install a theme. From the top of the app, click the directory icon and it’ll show you the currently installed themes. You can easily activate anyone you like.

Pling installed theme
Pling installed theme