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Firefox GNOME theme

Firefox GNOME theme

GitHub Donate Liberapay


A GNOME theme for Firefox

This theme follows latest GNOME Adwaita style.

Warning

Disclaimer:

Be aware that this theme might do things that are not supported by upstream Firefox. If you face an issue while using this theme, report it here first or test if it is reproducible in vanilla Firefox.

If you are a software distribution maintainer, please do not ship these changes by default to your users unless you make it extremely clear that they are using a modified version of the Firefox UI.

Screenshot of the theme

Description

This is a bunch of CSS code to make Firefox look closer to GNOME's native apps.

Getting in Touch

Matrix room: #firefox-gnome-theme:matrix.org

Firefox versions support

The master branch of this repo supports the current Firefox stable release 133.

Theme versions compatible with older Firefox releases are preserved as git tags.

We also have the beta and nightly branches for fixes only applicable to the current Firefox beta and nightly versions.

Installation

The most friendly way to get this theme is using the Add Water app.

Get it on Flathub

One command install with curl

To install this theme, you can run this command, which uses curl to download a script that will also download the latest released version of the theme (not the master version) and run the auto-install script for you.

Warning: Always be careful when running scripts from the Internet.

curl -s -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rafaelmardojai/firefox-gnome-theme/master/scripts/install-by-curl.sh | bash

Installation scripts

If you want to use other version of the theme than the stable one you can manually download the theme and run its install scripts.

First you need to grab a fresh copy of the theme repository by cloning it with git.

  1. Clone this repo and enter folder:

    git clone https://github.com/rafaelmardojai/firefox-gnome-theme.git
    cd firefox-gnome-theme
  2. Checkout a git branch or tag if needed, otherwise use master and ignore this step.

    git checkout beta # Set beta branch
    git checkout v78.1 # Set v78.1 tag

This theme provides two installation scripts in addition to the curled one.

Auto install script

This script will look for Firefox profiles from various known locations (~/.mozilla/firefox/, Flatpak, Snap, etc) and install the theme in each one. It will also enable a color variant for your GTK theme if it exists.

You can execute it by running:

./scripts/auto-install.sh

Manual install script

This script will only install the theme into the profiles found in the default Firefox folder ~/.mozilla/firefox/. The script accepts various flags to change its behavior.

Here are some examples of how to use it:

./scripts/install.sh # Standard
./scripts/install.sh -p pc8577yz.default-release # Only install in a profile named pc8577yz.default-release
./scripts/install.sh -f ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox # Flatpak
./scripts/install.sh -f ~/snap/firefox/common/.mozilla/firefox #Snap

Script options

  • -f <firefox_folder_path> optional

    • Set custom Firefox folder path, for example ~/.mozilla/icecat/.
    • Default: ~/.mozilla/firefox/
  • -p <profile_name> optional

    • Set custom profile name, for example e0j6yb0p.default-nightly.
    • Default: All the profiles found in the firefox folder

Advanced notes

Expand

If you want to checkout the theme version tag matching you Firefox version you can run:

git checkout v$(firefox --version | cut -d ' ' -f 3 | cut -d '.' -f 1) # Using Firefox version

Package managers

Arch Linux

  1. Install the AUR package firefox-gnome-theme
  2. Follow the instructions at cat /usr/share/doc/firefox-gnome-theme/INSTALL.md

Manual installation

Expand
  1. Go to about:support in Firefox.

  2. Application Basics > Profile Directory > Open Directory.

  3. Open directory in a terminal.

  4. Create a chrome directory if it doesn't exist:

    mkdir -p chrome
    cd chrome
  5. Clone this repo to a subdirectory:

    git clone https://github.com/rafaelmardojai/firefox-gnome-theme.git
  6. Create single-line user CSS files if non-existent or empty (at least one line is needed for sed):

    [[ -s userChrome.css ]] || echo >> userChrome.css
    [[ -s userContent.css ]] || echo >> userContent.css
  7. Import this theme at the beginning of the CSS files (all @imports must come before any existing @namespace declarations):

    sed -i '1s/^/@import "firefox-gnome-theme\/userChrome.css";\n/' userChrome.css
    sed -i '1s/^/@import "firefox-gnome-theme\/userContent.css";\n/' userContent.css
  8. Symlink preferences file:

    cd .. # Go back to the profile directory
    ln -fs chrome/firefox-gnome-theme/configuration/user.js user.js
  9. Restart Firefox.

  10. Open Firefox customization panel and move the new tab button to headerbar.

  11. Be happy with your new gnomish Firefox.

Required Firefox preferences

We provide a user.js configuration file in configuration/user.js that enable some preferences required by this theme to work.

You should already have this file installed if you followed one of the installation methods, but in any case be sure this preferences are enabled under about:config:

  • toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets

    This preference is required to load the custom CSS in Firefox, otherwise the theme wouldn't work.

  • svg.context-properties.content.enabled

    This preference is required to recolor the icons, otherwise you will get black icons everywhere.

For other non essential preferences checkout configuration/user.js.

Updating

You can follow the installation script steps again to update the theme.

Uninstalling

  1. Go to your profile folder. (Go to about:support in Firefox > Application Basics > Profile Directory > Open Directory)
  2. Remove chrome folder.
  3. Remove the unwanted preferences from your user.js inside your profile folder. The install script append the needed prefs in that file, you can check what preferences does it append by checking configuration/user.js in this repo.

Enabling optional features

Optional features can be enabled by creating new boolean preferences in about:config.

  1. Go to the about:config page
  2. Type the key of the feature you want to enable
  3. Set it as a boolean and click on the add button
  4. Restart Firefox

Features

  • Hide single tab gnomeTheme.hideSingleTab

    Hide the tab bar when only one tab is open.

    Note: You should move the new tab button out of the tabbar or it will be hidden when there is only one tab. You can rearrange the toolbars doing a right-click on any toolbar and selecting "Customize Toolbar…".

  • Normal width tabs gnomeTheme.normalWidthTabs

    Use normal width tabs as default Firefox.

  • Swap tab close button position gnomeTheme.swapTabClose

    By default the tab close buttons follows the position of the window controls, this preference reverts that behavior.

  • Bookmarks toolbar under tabs gnomeTheme.bookmarksToolbarUnderTabs

    Move Bookmarks toolbar under tabs.

  • Active tab contrast gnomeTheme.activeTabContrast

    Add more contrast to the active tab.

  • Close only selected tabs gnomeTheme.closeOnlySelectedTabs

    Show the close button on the selected tab only.

  • System icons gnomeTheme.systemIcons

    Use system theme icons instead of Adwaita icons included by theme.

    Note: This feature has a known color bug.

  • No themed Icons gnomeTheme.noThemedIcons

    Use default Firefox icons instead of the included icons.

  • Symbolic tab icons gnomeTheme.symbolicTabIcons

    Make all tab icons look kinda like symbolic icons.

  • Hide WebRTC indicator gnomeTheme.hideWebrtcIndicator

    Hide redundant WebRTC indicator since GNOME provides their own privacy icons in the top right.

  • Hide unified extensions button gnomeTheme.hideUnifiedExtensions

    Hide unified extensions button from the navbar, you can also use extensions.unifiedExtensions.enabled instead, which is only going to work till Firefox 111.

  • Drag window from headerbar buttons gnomeTheme.dragWindowHeaderbarButtons

    Allow dragging the window from headerbar buttons.

    Note: This feature is BUGGED. It can activate the button with unpleasant behavior.

  • Tabs as headerbar gnomeTheme.tabsAsHeaderbar

    Place the tabs on the top of the window, and use the tabs bar to hold the window controls, like Firefox's standard tab bar.

    Note: Enabling with gnomeTheme.hideSingleTab will replace the single tab with a title bar.

  • OLED black theme gnomeTheme.oledBlack

    Change the dark theme into the black variant.

  • Show "List All Tabs" button on overflow gnomeTheme.allTabsButtonOnOverflow

    Show the List All Tabs button when the tabs bar is overflowing (when you have too many tabs that the width of the tabs no longer shrinks when new tabs are added).

  • Show "List All Tabs" button gnomeTheme.allTabsButton

    Show the List All Tabs button all the time, like stock Firefox.

  • Align tab title and icon to left gnomeTheme.tabAlignLeft

    Align the tab title and favicon to left of tab in place of center.

  • Bookmarks bar in fullscreen gnomeTheme.bookmarksOnFullscreen

    Show the bookmarks bar while in fullscreen.

Extensions support

We also have optional features to enable support for some Firefox extensions.

Be aware that extensions support are maintained by the community, so requests to support new extensions are not allowed and the included ones could get broken until someone shows up to fix them.

  • Tab center reborn support gnomeTheme.extensions.tabCenterReborn

    Enable the vertical tab trough the extension : Tab Center Reborn.

    Note: You also need to copy the contents of the file configuration/extensions/tab-center-reborn.css into the settings page of Tabcenter-reborn..
    Note2: You can also maintain the vertical tab always open with gnomeTheme.extensions.tabCenterReborn.alwaysOpen Note2: You can disable animation by disabling animation into the extension and adding the flags gnomeTheme.extensions.tabCenterReborn.animationDisabled

Known bugs

CSD have sharp corners

See upstream bug.

Wayland fix:

  1. Go to the about:config page
  2. Search for the layers.acceleration.force-enabled preference and set it to true.
  3. Now restart Firefox, and it should look good!

X11 fix:

  1. Go to the about:config page
  2. Type mozilla.widget.use-argb-visuals
  3. Set it as a boolean and click on the add button
  4. Now restart Firefox, and it should look good!

Icons color broken with System icons

Icons might appear black where they should be white on some systems. I have no idea why, but you can adjust them directly in the system-icons.css file, look for --gnome-icons-hack-filter & --gnome-window-icons-hack-filter vars and play with css filters.

Development

If you wanna mess around the styles and change something, you might find these things useful.

To use the Inspector to debug the UI, open the developer tools (F12) on any page, go to options, check both of those:

  • Enable browser chrome and add-on debugging toolboxes
  • Enable remote debugging

Now you can close those tools and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I to Inspect the browser UI.

Also you can inspect any GTK3 application, for example type this into a terminal and it will run Epiphany with the GTK Inspector, so you can check the CSS styles of its elements too.

GTK_DEBUG=interactive epiphany

Feel free to use any parts of my code to develop your own themes, I don't force any specific license on your code.

Credits

Developed by Rafael Mardojai CM and contributors. Based on Luna Kurame's original work.

Donate

If you want to support development, consider donating via PayPal. Also consider donating upstream, Firefox & GNOME.