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Elegance Colors, a highly customizable, chameleonic GNOME Shell theme, has reached version 2.2.0, bringing some major configuration UI changes, new theme customization options, performance improvements and more. Since our last article, the theme has also got support for GNOME Shell 3.8 (it now supports both 3.6 and 3.8).

Elegance Colors GNOME Shell theme

Elegance Colors is a GNOME Shell theme that can automatically change its colors based on the current GTK theme or wallpaper. But that's not all: the theme comes with a configuration GUI that lets you change most of the GNOME Shell theme elements, so you can basically make brand new themes using it.

The configuration GUI lets you change the panel text color, border color and width, change the gradients for the background, search entry and more, change the buttons colors, set the theme roundness, enable or disable drop shadows, set the transition duration and many other settings.

Furthermore, the theme comes with some default presets (which change the theme look completely): Google, Numix, Pantheon, Gaia, Dark Shine, Clear, Matte, Tron Legacy and Ubuntu Phone. You can also export or import presets from the Elegance Colors Preferences.

Changes in Elegance Colors 2.2.0 since our previous article:
  • supports GNOME Shell 3.6 and 3.8;
  • major UI changes with better organized options in the GNOME Tweak Tool style;
  • undo/redo abilities;
  • many new options to customize the theme;
  • the text color of highlighted elements is now automatically adjusted
  • 5 new presets (there are 10 presets now);
  • you can now use symbolic colors and add custom CSS and images in the configuration file/preset (this isn't available via GUI);
  • performance improvements.

Note: don't confuse this with the GTK theme: only the GNOME Shell theme, meaning the top panel, the Activities Overview, some dialogs like the shutdown dialog and Dash are part of a GNOME Shell theme so the GTK theme won't change its colors!

Here are a few more Elegance Colors screenshots:

Elegance Colors GNOME Shell theme

Elegance Colors GNOME Shell theme

Elegance Colors GNOME Shell theme

Install Elegance Colors in Ubuntu

Before installing the theme, make sure you've installed the GNOME Shell User Theme extension. This is a part of the official GNOME Shell extensions pack which you can install it in Ubuntu using the following command:
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions
Then, install Elegance Colors GNOME Shell theme in Ubuntu (for GNOME Shell 3.6 and 3.8, so Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04 only) 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
Once installed, start the Elegance Colors process, required only once (it will then start automatically when you log in):
And finally, use GNOME Tweak Tool to change the current GNOME Shell theme to "Elegance Colors". This can also be done via command line:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.user-theme name 'elegance-colors'

For other Linux distributions downloads or more info, see Elegance Colors @ DeviantArt or GitHub (includes Fedora / openSUSE and Arch Linux packages).