Dark Mode gone after 22.04 - 24.04 LTS Upgrade

Support & Help Requests
1

Hi all,

I really have a strange configuration issue, effecting only one (the main) user of my 24.04. After I have upgraded, the dark mode was gone. I have done several things already:

  1. Change theme in appearance app - This works for the window decorations, but not for the windows themselves. All and really all entries under "Control" in the Appearance app show a light-preview (Adwaita is identical to Adwaita Dark is identical to Yaru Dark, is identical to ... anything)
  2. Installing new themes - they show up as above
  3. I tried gsettings reset-recursively org.mate.interface
  4. I tried sudo dconf reset -f /org/mate followed by sudo apt-get install --reinstall mate-themes
  5. I tried sudo apt install mate-themes followed by gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme (and icon-theme plus cursor-theme)
  6. I renamed my ~/.config and ~/.local folders

Everything resulting in exactly the same behavior. If I create a new user on the system, everything works as expected ootb, therefore I strongly assume I have completely messed up my configuration (It is also not a snap / flatpak issue, as even my mate-terminal comes with a white background, when I set it to system settings) - However I have no further idea, what I could have messed up. Any ideas on how to fix it?

Right now I have set many applications manually to dark, but that is not really a solution..

1 Like
2

Hi, @Croton and welcome to the Ubuntu MATE Community!

1 Like
3

Thank you for the welcome!

I know managed to overwrite the light theme with a dark theme with:

echo "export GTK_THEME=Yaru-MATE-dark" >> ~/.profile

which is nice, but doesn't solve the problem as such. Now regardless which theme I use everything is in dark. So my question may be specified to. Where do I need to look for GTK-theme overwrites. I would like the Appearance to work as intended again.

2 Likes
4

I know you haven't reached that point yet, but ...

IF/WHEN you do,

  • create a new user ID (USERNEW),
  • copy over ONLY select subdirectories of your current user ID (USEROLD) into that USERNEW's HOME directory,
  • confirm all is where you want it to be (namely copied all except for theme-related directories that have been "corrupted")

then ...

  • boot from a USB stick or Live DVD,
  • rename directory USEROLD to USERPREV,
  • rename directory USERNEW to USEROLD, and
  • inside your "rebuilt" USEROLD directory, issue the command find . -exec chown USEROLD:USEROLD {}
  • reboot without the USB stick or Live DVD.