Introduction to Themes

A theme is a group of coordinated settings that specifies the visual appearance of a part of the GNOME Desktop. Users can choose themes to change the appearance of the GNOME Desktop.

A theme contains settings that affect different parts of the GNOME Desktop, as follows:

Controls

The controls setting for a theme determines the visual appearance of windows, panels, and applets. The controls setting also determines the visual appearance of the GNOME-compliant interface items that appear on windows, panels, and applets, such as menus, icons, and buttons. Some of the controls setting options that are available are designed for special accessibility needs. Users can choose an option for the controls setting from the Controls tabbed section in the Theme preference tool.

Window frame

The window frame setting for a theme determines the appearance of the frames around windows only. Users can choose an option for the window frame setting from the Window Border tabbed section in the Theme preference tool.

Icon

The icon setting for a theme determines the appearance of the icons on panels and the desktop background. Users can choose an option for the icon setting from the Icons tabbed section in the Theme preference tool.