this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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I recently installed Linux Mint Cinammon on an old laptop to try it out. The Title bar on windows is too tall for me preferences. I poked around in settings but couldn't find a way to make the title bar shorter. Is this not possible or is there some CLI-fu config to force it?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

How does one do that? Through the Themes icon in the menu bar, under Preferences, I was able to double click on the following themes. Adapta-Nokto, CBlack, and Windows 10 Light Theme.

There is a checkmark to the left of them indicating they are installed. But I can't seem to activate them. I double click on them and nothing happens. Right mouse button and middle mouse button does nothing.

When I go back to the Themes tab under Simplified Settings, they do not appear in the Style drop down list.

How do I activate these themes I downloaded? I see they are in ~/.themes as expected.

~$ ll ~/.themes
drwxrwxr-x  5 clu clu 4096 Sep 11 19:49 ./
drwxr-x--- 26 clu clu 4096 Sep 11 19:55 ../
drwxrwxr-x  9 clu clu 4096 Sep 11 19:48 Adapta-Nokto/
drwxrwxr-x  7 clu clu 4096 Sep 11 19:48 CBlack/
drwxrwxr-x  9 clu clu 4096 Sep 11 19:49 Windows-10/

So I found an option under Themes Tab called Desktop. When I click it, the downloaded themes are available to select, along with a million other ones. I selected each of my themes but really didn't notice much difference. The Start Menu changed a little bit. Very underwhelmed. Is theming only available for the Start Menu? No title bars, windows, background, icons, mouse looks different at all.

I must be doing this wrong. ??? The Mouse Pointer, Applications, and Icons buttons don't list the new theme as an option to select. ?? I guess I mistakenly thought a "theme" impacted most aspects of the GUI. ??

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are many types of themes (look at what's inside the theme folder) eg. cursor, icons, widget (gtk/qt), wm/de specific stuff (xfwm, cinnamon) etc.

The theme you downloaded might only have cinnamon folder, they can only affect the taskbar and the start menu. For the titlebar, you want gtk themes (the one with gtk-x.xx folder) and select it under Applications theme.

I think the ones listed under simplified theme are just presets of icon+cursor+gtk+desktop themes bundled together.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you recommend one with a short window title bar? I've tried numerous ones that appear in the Main Menu -> Preferences -> Themes: Add/Remove Tab. None of them thus far has made any difference regarding the height of the title bar. Or are you suggestions to get these gtk themes from elsewhere?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, I usually download them from Pling. You could try NewAdwaita-slim.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't use Cinnamon, but try to change the size of the font used by the title bar, in "Cinnamon Settings". It might do the trick.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tried. No go. It doesn't change with the font size of the title bar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Damn, that was a shame. Worth a try.

I am not sure on what I'm going to say, but then it's possible that Cinnamon only allows you to do it through theme customisation. So one of the things that you could do is to look for Cinnamon spices (I think that's how it calls its themes?) with the words "small" and "title bar".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay thanks. May try it. Or may juts switch to i3 or xfce. I installed i3 the other day. Took a few hours of playing with it before I became comfortable with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If you're considering Xfce, there's also Mate (the one that I use). Mint has rather good support to it, and it's basically GNOME 2 being updated by another team.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Still couldn't find anything in Cinnamon Spices. Oh well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm guessing you mean that it is too thick in which case only 2 things will change this, the theme and the font size, I have for now only found 2 themes with a reasonably sized title bar that aren't too ugly, adwaita-slim and dracula-slim. If you look for "compact" or "slim" in sites like cinnamon looks you might find ones you like better

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Font size did not affect change.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

the font you had before you changed it may have already been hitting the minimum size of your gtk theme

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

the font you had before you changed it may have already been hitting the minimum size of your gtk theme

I don't understand what that means.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I found there isn't any great way to do so. Your best bet is finding a theme that works for you. I like cinnamon for a nice default look though I am thinking of switching back to kde so I can customize more. The one theme I like has a title bar to big ):

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Sorry to hijack the post, but is there a way to make middle-click on the title bar to move the window to the other monitor?