Highly Customizable, Chameleonic GNOME Shell theme `Elegance Colors` Sees New Release

Elegance Colors, a chameleonic, highly customizable GNOME Shell theme, has been updated today, the new version bringing an option to export a customized theme for later use.

The latest Elegance Colors 0.3 works with GNOME Shell 3.6 and the best thing about it is that the theme changes its colors according to the current GTK theme, wallpaper or an user-defined color. The theme also comes with a configuration tool which can be used to customize it: use light or dak menus, change the panel or menu opacity, font size and other options.

Here are a few examples of customizations supported by Elegance Colors:

Default settings, color derived from the wallpaper

Color based on the current wallpaper, light menu style

Color derived from the wallpaper, light menu style, smaller font size, 0.2 panel opacity, no panel corner roundness

Besides the option to export a customized theme, Elegance Colors 0.3 also brings more customization options: set gradient size, transition duration and box shadow. Also, in the new version, theme changes are applied instantly.

To use the new "Export theme" option, open Elegance Colors Preferences and from the GMenu, select Export theme. The theme will be exported to a .zip file - don't install it using GNOME Tweak Tool because it will be installed to a location where it doesn't work. Simply extract it to ~/.themes and you'll have your new, working custom theme.

How to install and use Elegance Colors GNOME Shell theme

The latest Elegance Colors is available in a PPA for Ubuntu 12.10 (GNOME Shell 3.6) users. Add the PPA and install the theme using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:satyajit-happy/themes
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-theme-elegance-colors

The PPA has Elegance Colors for Ubuntu 12.04 as well, but it's an older version.

For other Linux distributions, you can download GNOME Shell Elegance Colors theme from DeviantArt.

To use Elegance Colors, you'll need the User Themes GNOME Shell extension which can be installed via extensions.gnome.org or from the Ubuntu 12.10 repositories:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions

If you've installed the User Themes extensions via GNOME's website, you'll need to run the following command for Elegance Colors to work:

sudo elegance-colors fix

Once you've installed the theme and the User Themes extension, run the following command in a terminal to start the Elegance Colors process, which is used to apply the theme changes:

elegance-colors

You can also simply log out and log back in.

And finally, set the new theme via GNOME Tweak Tool > Theme > Shell theme.