Hey all, I’ve created a dark theme which I’m really happy with - is there any way I can export the colour configuration so I can use it on another Haiku installation?
I’ve tried the ThemeManager but the UI doesn’t honour the font colour, so I can’t see anything!
For those who’d like to see what it looks like:
I changed all the text colours in Appearance prefs and saved a new theme in ThemeManager. I can switch back and forth between it and my standard theme and the text colour changes accordingly.
That’s a ThemeManager bug. 
The alert appears empty, but after clicking “OK”, a new “My Theme” should appear in the list at the left of the main window.
Is it my impression or with dark themes the buttons look glossy and ugly?
I’ve always kind of thought this too… I’ve set all the controls to black before and they really stand out against the background window chrome. Maybe Haiku needs an ‘official’ dark mode with a Dark Mode decorator, since all the titans have it now in some form or fashion.
Yes; I believe this is because the “shine” colour value is ignored by the renderer. If you change it, nothing happens.
Edit: Ignore this. It’s because the decorators automatically decide the tab tint colour in the TabDecorator.cpp file (I think!)
fFocusTabColor = settings.UIColor(B_WINDOW_TAB_COLOR);
fFocusTabColorLight = tint_color(fFocusTabColor,
(B_LIGHTEN_MAX_TINT + B_LIGHTEN_2_TINT) / 2);That computation could likely be made more robust. Someone would just need to play with it…
I was thinking, perhaps an additional colour value could be added for the gradient colour?
These is part of the decorator that is in charge of the window borders and tab. The button uses HaikuControLook.cpp
Gotcha. Thank you for letting me know. Theoretically, if I wanted to play around with this code, what system service would I need to stop and replace…?
Hmm that’s odd, as I clearly remember using it with dark themes already… Feel free to send a patch 
The BControlLook is conceive as an addon but is not fully implemented at this time. (InterfaceDefs.cpp)
I think your only option is to recompile at least the interface kit for now.
I think the bug we see in the screenshot is unrelated to dark themes. It is the empty popup bug reported here New button opens a empty popup · Issue #1 · HaikuArchives/HaikuThemeManager · GitHub
Are the following themes available?..
There are several themes available in a branch here, however they will apply differently on Haiku, BeOS R5 and ZETA, since the decors are different.
I do the Unix thing and copy over my home folder. All my settings follow me that way. I do the dark theme thing too. There should be an appearances file in one of the folders under config/settings in your home tree. /boot/home/config/settings/app_server I think is the folder. Copy that folder to your other installs.
Thank you!!!
No problem. When in doubt, Haiku is POSIX. Lot’s of *nix tricks work. IMO they work better in Haiku than anything else.
Another Haiku native trick is to use the Installer app. If you use the partition of the setup you want to duplicate as the Installer source, you can install an exact replica of that install on another partition, physical disk, usb key, etc. This works great for propagating a setup that you want to deploy quickly among a large (or small) number of computers.
This works great also for having a recovery usb that contains a live bootable system with all your settings that you can in turn use to recover a pooched install. Think of it as Haiku snapshots. Don’t forget to run makebootable or BootMan on a fresh install.
