[Bug]: dolphin background won't follow the theme

[Raze4284]

After fresh installing endeavourOS i installed hyprdots and seems like my dolphin got problems
Idk why it white, i patched themes

[kRHYME7]

Let's just wait (few months) for official documentation from KDe. They love breaking changes lol.

[Raze4284]

Let's just wait (few months) for official documentation from KDe. They love breaking changes lol.
Thank you.. Its hopeful :_)

[Raze4284]

Let's just wait (few months) for official documentation from KDe. They love breaking changes lol.

Btw what i can do now?

[kRHYME7]

I'm using thunar or nemo as of the moment, as long as you don't have extra usecase for dolphin.

[openwick]

I have KDE installed alongside hyprland and going into kde and setting global theme to dark makes dolphin look normal. Dont know why but u can use it for now I guess

[kRHYME7]

I have KDE installed alongside hyprland and going into kde and setting global theme to dark makes dolphin look normal. Dont know why but u can use it for now I guess

Can you share some "suspicious" files where might kde write the color state for dolphin? I only knew the icons are in kdeglobals.

[openwick]

Can you share some "suspicious" files where might kde write the color state for dolphin? I only knew the icons are in kdeglobals.

I don't know what files KDE is overwriting. Never themed KDE properly. Maybe some thing in /usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/ ?

[Melk0rr]

Hello, having the same issue.
As a temporary fix that worked for me:
According to arch wiki

So i just added a dcol file to run the following

${scrDir}/wallbashkdeglobals.sh|${scrDir}/wallbashkdeglobals.sh
#!/usr/bin/env sh

sed -i "/^BackgroundNormal=/c\BackgroundNormal=#<wallbash_pry1>" "$HOME/.config/kdeglobals"

[kRHYME7]

@Melk0rr Hmm is Dolphin kde moving their configs to Kdeglobals now?.

[Melk0rr]

Honestly I don't know what they're doing but it seems there is work going on on kde's end to try and solve their theming mess cf. Brodie.

The dolphin bg issue seems to be recurrent, as the wiki mentioned it. But it also states that one could use kvantum to manage qt6 theming. However, here it does not solve the problem.

So yeah , I don't know how to address the issue properly here

[Melk0rr]

Found a kdeglobals exemple.

[kRHYME7]

Wow, how do you make thunar look like dolphin. Didn't know we can move the panel to the right in thunar.

[kRHYME7]

Hi everyone,

Can you check if this env vars can potentially resolve the issue of dolphin?

[kRHYME7]

reference here #1778

[ArctynFox]

In response to #1778 (comment)
My wallbash is set to auto:

[kRHYME7]

@thyeun

Explain further, during fresh installation, the dolphin version is old version, and once it been install, it will cache in the setting, and if the cache setting are not clear out after the new version been install, when qt env change to kdeglobals.

old version is using qt env
new version is using kdeglobals

How can I potentially clear it out?

[thyeun]

You have to restart the plasma-dolphin service daemon to clear it, but i'm not sure latest upgrade still using that daemon or not.

/usr/lib/systemd/user/plasma-dolphin.service

[kRHYME7]

It's not running on my end and I also can't enable it

[thyeun]

Dolphin got a new update 2.08.2-1

The service sound like no more working.

[kRHYME7]

Dolphin got a new update 2.08.2-1

And resizing on dolphin excibits some stutter specially if the background is transparent.

[Melk0rr]

Since last update I have yet another appearance:

Top bar and view background colors are ignoring qt5ct, qt6ct, kvantum and even kdeglobals

[chrollorifat]

At this point, what do we even do?

[kRHYME7]

I can't really repro those issues as my dolphin is working fine. Maybe wait for dolphin to settle down it's breaking changes.

[SushiByte-beep]

I found that by playing around with the KDE system themes that i can toggle dolphin between 2 modes. Interesting to note that editing the KDE themes does not actually affect the applied theme much further.

Either everything looks normal theming wise but i suffer many glitches and flickering

Or Performance is top notch and the background is washed out white like in picture of OP.

[kRHYME7]

i can toggle dolphin between 2 modes

I'm intrigued by this. How to do it. Is it in the Plasma GUI?

[SushiByte-beep]

I'm intrigued by this. How to do it. Is it in the Plasma GUI?

I have kde plasma installed and run kde system settings from within hyprdots. There i go to themes.

Global theme seems to have no effect, icon style works like it appears.

Application style is what appears to toggle between the 2 variations. The default KDE "breeze" and the Ms windows theme have the stable performance with white background.

All other application styles i tried have the correct dark background at the expense of stability.

[kRHYME7]

Application style is what appears to toggle between the 2 variations. The default KDE "breeze" and the Ms windows theme have the stable performance with white background.

I will try to look into this one. I assume variations means like themes right?

I really want to try to replicate OPs issue but dolphin works perfectly as expected on my end.

[kRHYME7]

Is it possible that different application styles in KDE uses different methods

yup kde has couple of ways in there theming which is too confusing to know which is which.

But I would love to know what file is change. Is it only the kedglobals ? If so it's dumb if only dolphin relies on that file.
Can you also check if dolphinrc can be use to theme?

[kRHYME7]

Okay! I can confirm that we can use dolphinrc to handle Icons. But I would still prefer to use kdeglobals to handle the default terminal and icons.

Moving forward, I think we can use dolphinrc to handle dolphin colors. I hate touching the kdeglobals (as well as dolphinrc) but if this is used to theme dolphin without touching kdeglobals then we have no other choice. Konsole terminal also can be themed in konsolerc.

Now I'm wondering if these *rc files can handle includes like the ones in ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file
So we can just make a separate file specific for hyDE without touching any user spsecific files e.g dolphinrc and kdeglobals.

[fr0st-iwnl]

I had the same problem, and what worked for me was downgrading Dolphin to an older version. Just install the 'downgrade' tool (sudo pacman -S downgrade), then run sudo downgrade dolphin and try a few of the older versions. It’s a weird issue, but this did the trick for me!

[chrollorifat]

kde has made dolphin too much depended on the other kde modules and stuff which makes it really hard to work with dolphin on DEs/WMs other than KDE's own ecosystem.

[Melk0rr]

Downgrading a package should always be something temporary. It is not a good practice.
Actually, dolphin looks as expected now on my end.
What I did was :

• uninstall dolphin and every KDE app with the exception of kwallet and kvantum.
• using plocate I deleted every config files related to KDE or dolphin
• deleted temp files
• rebooted
• reinstaller dolphin
  Dolphin also received a new update recently so maybe that helped too

[thyeun]

@Melk0rr clear cache and everything reload/reinstall back, some how are not workable for certain user here, as per mentioned here.

@chrollorifat KDE always have a different way of doing things, some years ago, they using QT and some years now they using KDEglobals, and maybe some year later, they ignore both. :))

[kRHYME7]

using KDEglobals, and maybe some year later, they ignore both. :))

We can also use dolphinrc to isolate the colors for dolphin only. Works for background but how about the dark text even on dark mode? You got some idea in there?

[thyeun]

The text previously control by kvantum but after the recent few times of update, it look like not that case any more.

Really need someone from KDE side to explain, what been remain, and what been remove.

We look like try and error here (very pity to you @kRHYME7 )

[chrollorifat]

btw, a bit off topic from this issue, but are we going to implement hydegallery or hyprpanel in the future? or are we totally abandoning even the notion of it?

[kRHYME7]

btw, a bit off topic from this issue, but are we going to implement hydegallery or hyprpanel in the future? or are we totally abandoning even the notion of it?

https://github.com/HyDE-Project/hyde-gallery ?
https://github.com/HyDE-Project/HyprPanel ?

WDYM?

After having this configs we can write an extension manager for HyDe for easy installation. It's still on wip though as I'm trying to write it in GO. (I can finish it using bash but this might be hard to maintain and contribute. )

[thyeun]

Both also i pass :)) that panel ugly, if compare with ags .

[kRHYME7]

compare with ags .

hyprpanel is implemted using ags.

[thyeun]

i already pass ags, that why i pass also.

[kRHYME7]

@ Hello anyone here still got the Background issue? can you try to add this to your ~/.config/dolphinrc (remove it first in the kdeglobals) first then restart dolphin. Check if the background changes.

 [Colors:View]
BackgroundNormal=#ff00ff

If not try it in ~/.config/kdeglobals

[SushiByte-beep]

@ Hello anyone here still got the Background issue? can you try to add this to your ~/.config/dolphinrc (remove it first in the kdeglobals) first then restart dolphin. Check if the background changes.
If not try it in ~/.config/kdeglobals

I have tried both and neither file seems to have any effect.
I have also tried copying your kdeglobals above entirely, also to no effect.

weird thing though since #1977 the font on my screen actually appears fixed (full black on white) which makes no sense to me but is a lot more useable. It used to be similar to the screenshot posted by op where the theme font colours are still applied. Maybe these issues are related?

[kRHYME7]

@SushiByte-beep Can you show us some screenshots with dolphin on light theme (Material Sakura) and dark (Catppuccin Mocha)

[SushiByte-beep]

@SushiByte-beep Can you show us some screenshots with dolphin on light theme (Material Sakura) and dark (Catppuccin Mocha)

Mocha, Sakura and Gruvbox in a different viewmode. Changing modes (dark/light/auto/theme) made no different for dolphin.

[kRHYME7]

uhm did you restart dolphin across the theme change?

[SushiByte-beep]

uhm did you restart dolphin across the theme change?

Every time.

I also made a screenshot of how it looks with other KDE themes using kde system settings, which appears similarly glitched.

With these (kvantum, kvantum-dark, q5tc, q6tc) i have horrible flicker not seen in the screenshot rendering them unusable. but the background does apply correctly, alt color for list view does not and the font is broken like in #1977

The screenshots in my previous comment are identical for the breeze, fusion and Ms win theme.

[SushiByte-beep]

OK so i removed dolphin and plasma completely in order to reinstall them and learned some things.

The first thing i noticed upon installing just dolphin is that by default, it is like the screenshot in my latest comment where the background mostly works but the font and list view are broken. The flicker appears to be gone.

When i install plasma, its breeze theme takes over and the background changes to white for all themes. From that point the behaviour is a toggle between 2 modes as explained above.

I suppose the fix for this issue is if you install KDE plasma together with hyprland, you have to change the application theme back. But as for now this bug also acts as a temporary workaround to the font and list view not working.

[kRHYME7]

For cases like this it's better to find out which themes dolphin. Can you check kdeglobals if the file changes when switching modes?

[SushiByte-beep]

It seems for all themes its both kdglobals and dolphinrc but only for some settings.

What i did was remove both file contents before restarting dolphin with each theme.

kdeglobls only appears to save what icon pack is selected (in kde system settings) and the theme that is selected.

[Icons]
Theme=Gruvbox-Plus-Dark

[KDE]
widgetStyle=qt6ct-style

Dolphinrc always go back to this

[General]
Version=202
ViewPropsTimestamp=2024,11,13,15,37,47.626

[KFileDialog Settings]
Places Icons Auto-resize=false
Places Icons Static Size=22

[MainWindow]
ToolBarsMovable=Disabled

[MainWindow][Toolbar mainToolBar]
IconSize=16
ToolButtonStyle=IconOnly

I assume there must be yet another file that does store the colour values, i will keep looking but i am at a loss for where.

[kRHYME7]

You can try in .local/state and in .local/share.

Also while trying to learn some kde6 themes I also found out plasmarc so maybe try to check it too

[kRHYME7]

Anyone can check if #1999 fixes this issue too?

[DivineMK]

Works for me!

[SushiByte-beep]

ok so on my end the problem is threefold and i think i now know the fix for all.

Problem 1) White background appears to be caused by new theming features of KDE plasma.
Fix: Change the application theme in KDE system settings to kvantum or remove plasma-dekstop

Problem 2) Dolphin experiencing heavy stutter and glitching
Fix: Make sure tooltip_delay=-1 is set in ~/.config/Kvantum/wallbash/wallbash.kvconfig

Problem 3) Transparent Font and list view color mismatch
Fix: [UiSettings] ColorScheme=* is set in ~/.config/dolphinrc

[kRHYME7]

Problem 1) White background appears to be caused by new theming features of KDE plasma.
Fix: Change the application theme in KDE system settings to kvantum or remove plasma-dekstop

Can you point out which file has this? if you can't find the file maybe share these plasmarc , kdeglobals, dolphinrc.

Problem 2) Dolphin experiencing heavy stutter and glitching
Fix: Make sure tooltip_delay=-1 is set in ~/.config/Kvantum/wallbash/wallbash.kvconfig

So we should explicitly add this per theme? how about removing this line in the config?
Also any side effects by adding this ?

I guess I can accept a fix for themes. I'm now maintaining the base themes for Hyprdots

Problem 3) Transparent Font and list view color mismatch
Fix: [UiSettings] ColorScheme=* is set in ~/.config/dolphinrc

This is actually a workaround for a bug I guess because the issue appears when that section and variable is blank or unset. Maybe we don't need it soon or it might be documented.

Thank you for your help 🙏

[chrollorifat]

man, i wish i had the time to clone dolphin and make a new file manager app out of that without the annoyances of dolphin.