From a fresh install to a fully themed desktop.
Vivid Gradience works out of the box, and goes further with three optional pieces installed. This page walks the whole first run in the order it actually happens — including the one dialog that may surprise you, and how to undo everything.
One command, from the signed repo. New releases arrive with flatpak update.
flatpak install --user https://superuser-miguel.github.io/Vivid_Gradience-repo/VividGradience.flatpakref
flatpak run io.github.superuser_miguel.VividGradiencePrefer a single file with no remote? The .flatpak bundle works too, but carries no update path. Both are signed with the project's GPG key. Vivid Gradience is not on Flathub and is distributed independently.
Each one unlocks an engine. Skip any of them — the app tells you what's missing when you try the feature, and never installs anything behind your back.
Lets the Shell engine restyle your panel, overview and quick settings, live. Install the User Themes extension from extensions.gnome.org and enable it. Without it you can still generate a Shell theme — you just can't switch to it.
Older GTK 3 applications follow your scheme through adw-gtk3. Install it from your distribution, and install the Flatpak extension so sandboxed apps resolve it too:
flatpak install flathub org.gtk.Gtk3theme.adw-gtk3
Without the extension, host apps get the theme while every Flatpak silently falls back to stock Adwaita — the Desktop group's GTK 3 picker warns you if you're in that state.
The Firefox engine writes your scheme through firefox-gnome-theme — and this is the one prerequisite the app can set up for you: it offers to install a tested release into your profiles the first time you press Apply, and can uninstall it just as cleanly. It isn't a system component, just files in your Firefox profile. A copy you installed yourself works too and is never touched. Works for LibreWolf and Waterfox alike; the engine's "Detected Profiles" row shows what it can see.
Pick, tweak, apply. Nothing touches your desktop until the Apply button.
The Presets tab is a gallery of 85 schemes — click a card and it loads into the editor. Nothing is applied yet; browse freely.
The Colors tab edits all 46 named colours. Every colour button opens the preset's own palette first — the system picker is behind the Custom… button. The preview at the top redraws as you edit and flags any text that falls below WCAG AA contrast.
Choose which toolkits to theme (GTK 4 / GTK 3). Applied colours are read by each app at startup — so restart an app to see it themed. The Shell, once themed, updates with no logout at all.
If a dialog says "An Existing Theme Was Found": you already had a
theme's stylesheet in ~/.config/gtk-4.0 (or gtk-3.0), and
Vivid Gradience refuses to silently overwrite what it didn't write.
Import as Theme is the recommended answer — your file moves into
your theme library (Advanced tab), where it stays selectable, and the
preset applies afterwards. "Back Up and Replace" snapshots it instead;
Cancel walks away. Nothing is lost on any of the three.
All on the Theming tab. Each one is separate — use what you like, ignore the rest.
Generates a GNOME Shell theme from the current preset and applies it to the running session — panel, overview, quick settings, no logout. Reset Theme puts the stock Shell styling back and deletes what was generated.
Builds a Material You scheme from any image — usually your wallpaper. Choose a variant and contrast, apply, then fine-tune in Colors like any other scheme.
Writes the preset into every profile that has firefox-gnome-theme — and installs the theme itself if no profile does, from a release the project has tested. Restart Firefox to see it. Remove Theme takes the colours back out; Uninstall removes the theme the app installed — and anything the engine didn't write is never touched.
Recolours Adwaita's blue icons — folders, drives, mimetypes — through the preset's palette, and selects the generated theme. Applies live to open windows. Remove selects your previous icon theme again.
The settings that used to need GNOME Tweaks: GTK 3 theme, cursor, dark style, window buttons. Every one is a plain system setting — instantly reversible by picking the old value again.
Everything Apply touches is recorded first. The way back is always shorter than the way in.
| To undo… | Do this |
|---|---|
| The last preset you applied | Advanced tab → restore the previous preset. Every Apply snapshots the state before it, ten deep. |
| Everything, back to before Vivid Gradience | Advanced tab → restore the original theme — the stylesheet captured once, on first Apply, and never overwritten since. |
| The Shell, Firefox or icon theming | Each engine's own Reset / Remove button. They only ever remove what the engine generated. |
| The Firefox GNOME Theme itself, if the app installed it | Firefox engine → Uninstall. Removes the theme, its stylesheet imports and its preferences from exactly the profiles the app installed it into — copies you installed yourself are not touched. |
| A Desktop-group setting | Pick the previous value — they're live system settings, nothing is written anywhere else. |
| A theme you imported or rescued | Advanced tab → Custom Themes → Remove. Deletion asks first and can't reach outside the library. |
Applied colours are read at application startup, so after a restore the same rule applies in reverse: restart an app to see it un-themed. The findings page has the full table of what updates live and what needs reopening.