Applications

Every window on the desk wears the palette, not only the shell’s. Most take it on their own the next time they open a window. What a few need beyond a file, ./setup install sets up once, and Spotify takes it at its next start.

Application	Follows on its own	Set up once by install	Takes a new palette
GTK windows: satty, file-roller, pavucontrol, gimp	yes	dark, with the impasto icons	the next window
Qt and KDE windows	yes	nothing; qt6ct is in the package list	the next window
Nautilus	colours, folders and its right-click menu	its preferences and sidebar	the next window
Zen	yes	named for web pages and PDFs	the next window
Vesktop	yes	its theme ticked	at once
VSCodium	the theme, the font and the extensions’ colours	its extensions and settings	the next window
Spotify	once patched	the patch	its next start
imv	yes	named for pictures	the next picture opened
The Open dialog, the screen-share picker	yes	nothing	the next dialog

A program that is open while install runs, or a Spotify never started, is skipped with the reason and set up by the next install or update. After that install leaves them alone, so what you change in them stays; each has a verb of its own that sets it up again (The setup script).

Two windows in the same palette as the bar above them.

Making the rest of the machine agree

What opens a file, whether GTK windows are dark and which icons they draw are the machine’s settings, not files the desk carries, so install sets them once, with ./setup defaults:

Files	Open in
Pictures: JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, SVG	imv
Text and JSON	neovim
Folders	Nautilus
Web pages, links and PDFs	Zen

A line is left alone when ~/.config/mimeapps.list already names a default for any of its types, so a browser or a viewer you chose stays chosen, and a program that is not installed is skipped. Then GTK is set dark, and its icon theme to impasto, which is what gives Nautilus’s folders the wallpaper’s colour. Without the first, GTK windows come up light with the palette’s colours on them.

The GTK settings hold only when set inside the session. Run from a TTY, the verb says so, and the next install or update from a terminal in Hyprland sets them.

GTK

Every palette change writes gtk.css into ~/.config/gtk-3.0/ and ~/.config/gtk-4.0/. The ground is the palette’s background tinted with the accent; header bars, cards, popovers and sidebars sit on the raised surface; the accent fills selections and colours links. Only colours change: the theme stays Adwaita, and every widget keeps Adwaita’s shape.

• GTK reads the sheet when an application starts, so a window already open keeps its old colours.
• The type is Adwaita Sans 11, from the settings.ini the desk carries. The shell’s font setting does not reach GTK.
• satty, the annotator the capture hands a picture to, is one of these windows, and so is every Open and Save dialog.

Caution

The gtk.css in those two folders belongs to the palette push and is rewritten on every palette change. Rules of your own in it are lost.

Qt and KDE

Qt windows take the palette through qt6ct, in Qt’s Fusion style. The session names qt6ct as the platform theme, and every palette change writes its colour scheme to ~/.config/qt6ct/colors/impasto.conf. KDE applications, such as gwenview, spectacle and the KDE password dialog the shell falls back on, read ~/.config/kdeglobals instead, so the push merges its colours into that file too and leaves everything else in it alone.

• A window already open keeps its colours; the next one comes up in the new palette.
• Leave qt6ct’s own window alone: what you save there is replaced at the next palette change.
• Without qt6ct installed, plain Qt windows come up in Breeze’s light grey. KDE applications still follow.
• Qt 5 applications, VLC among them, are not themed.
• Merging into kdeglobals drops any comments in it.

Nautilus

SUPER E opens Nautilus, the file manager, a GTK 4 window that takes its colours from the named colours in the same ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css as the rest, with nothing added. On the dock it is a tile of its own.

The folders are the wallpaper’s colour. Every palette change writes an icon theme, impasto, in ~/.local/share/icons/: Papirus-Dark’s icons, with the folders pointed at whichever of Papirus’s twenty-five folder colours is nearest the accent. A folder is a drawing, so it lands on the nearest swatch rather than on the accent exactly. GTK draws it once its icon theme is impasto, which install sets (above), in every GTK application started afterwards.

The right-click menu carries five entries of the desk’s own, from a nautilus-python extension the desk carries, so they are there from the first window:

Entry	Does	On
Open Terminal Here	kitty, in that folder	a folder, or a folder’s background
Open yazi Here	yazi in kitty, in that folder	a folder, or a folder’s background
Open in the Editor	VSCodium	anything selected, or a folder’s background
Set as Wallpaper	that picture or video as the wallpaper, and the palette from it	one picture or video
Copy Path	the full paths, to the clipboard	anything selected

./setup nautilus sets what is not a colour or a file, and install runs it once. It sets:

• hidden files off, and folders before files;
• Delete Permanently and Create Link on the menu;
• your Desktop, Documents, Pictures and Downloads folders in the sidebar, where they are missing;
• folders opening in Nautilus when Thunar is still their default.

A setting you change later in Nautilus’s own preferences stays until you run the verb again.

Zen

Zen needs nothing. Every palette change writes userChrome.css into the profile Zen opens, under ~/.config/zen/, and a user.js with the one preference that makes Zen read it. The toolbar sits on the raised surface, the sidebar on the background, and the accent is Zen’s primary colour; the frame is dark under every palette.

• userChrome.css is read when a window opens and user.js when Zen starts, so the first time needs Zen restarted. After that, each new window takes the palette.
• The page area of an empty tab is Firefox’s own dark grey, not the palette’s.

Zen's own theme picker

While the palette is on it, choosing a workspace theme in Zen appears to do nothing: the palette’s colour on the sidebar wins over the gradient the picker sets. To have the picker back, delete the #zen-browser-background and #zen-toolbar-background rules from build_zen_css in ~/.config/quickshell/scripts/theme_manager.py; the sidebar goes back to Zen’s own at the next palette change. setup keeps an edited file and writes its own version beside it as theme_manager.py.new.

Vesktop

Vesktop follows the palette once its theme is ticked, and install ticks it. Every palette change writes ~/.config/vesktop/themes/impasto.css, and Vencord repaints a running Vesktop the moment the file changes. The tick goes into Vencord’s own settings, with everything else in them kept. Vencord rewrites that file while it runs, so an open Vesktop is skipped and ticked by the next install or update, or by ./setup vesktop once it is closed. Unticked by hand, under Vesktop’s settings → Themes, it stays unticked.

• Your Quick CSS is left alone.
• Nitro’s purple stays Discord’s.
• The theme sets Discord’s own colour variables and names no class. A Discord update that renames those variables leaves the theme loading without error and changing less.

Spotify

Spotify wears the palette from its next start. spicetify does not theme Spotify, it patches it: the colours are compiled into /opt/spotify, and nothing is read while it runs. ./setup spotify is the patch, and install runs it. After that, every palette change writes ~/.config/spicetify/Themes/impasto/color.ini and rewrites the stylesheets inside the patched client, restarting nothing, so a Spotify that is playing keeps the old colours until it starts again.

Before the first patch:

1. Use the spotify package from the AUR, not spotify-launcher, which updates itself on every start and takes the patch with it. spotify and spicetify-cli are both in the package list.

2. Open Spotify once, and close it: spicetify needs the settings Spotify writes on its first start.

3. Run ./setup update, or ./setup spotify. It asks to make Spotify’s folder writable, selects the theme, and patches it.

A Spotify update takes the patch away, because it rewrites /opt/spotify. The next ./setup update sees that and patches it again, with the player closed; ./setup spotify does it at once, and restarts Spotify.

VSCodium

The colour theme is written as an extension, in ~/.vscode-oss/extensions/impasto/, on every palette change, with nothing to install. A window already open keeps its colours; Developer: Reload Window, or a new window, takes the new ones.

./setup vscodium does the rest, and install runs it once. It installs four extensions from Open VSX — Material Icon Theme, Fluent Icons, Error Lens and indent-rainbow — and merges into your settings.json: the Impasto theme and the two icon themes selected, the shell’s monospace font with ligatures at 14, the activity bar along the top, and no minimap, breadcrumbs or command centre. Everything else in the file stays; comments in it do not survive the merge. An extension that cannot be fetched leaves the verb to the next install or update.

• The font and the palette keep up on their own. A change of the shell’s monospace font, or of the palette, rewrites just those values in settings.json — the fonts, the folder icons’ colour and indent-rainbow’s colours — in place and only where they are set, so comments and every other key survive, and a key you delete stays deleted.
• Without the verb, pick the theme yourself: CTRL K, then CTRL T, then Impasto.
• Error Lens and indent-rainbow draw nothing in a folder until you trust it.

imv

imv opens floating over the windows, centred at seven tenths of the screen, whether the picture comes from yazi, Nautilus or a photo on the desktop. Its whole configuration is written by the palette push: the picture sits on the terminal’s tinted background, and the overlay, shown with d, is in the palette. A picture already open keeps its colours. Because the push owns ~/.config/imv/config, anything else you write there is replaced at the next palette change.

The portals

When an application asks for a file or for the screen, the dialog that answers already wears the palette. The Open and Save dialogs come from xdg-desktop-portal-gtk and are GTK windows; the screen-share picker comes from xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland and is a Qt window. Both are in the package list and need no configuration.