Theme Switcher

Browse saved themes in a carousel and apply palette, wallpaper, and templates to the shell in one click. Each theme bundles a palette source (built-in, wallpaper, community, or custom), the wallpaper that goes with it, a preview screenshot, and a title.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	theblackdon/theme-switcher
Entries	Shortcut: open; shortcut: wallpaper; shortcut: random; bar widget: theme-switcher; panel: carousel; panel: editor; panel: wallpapers; service: wallpaper-ipc

Requirements

• No dependency is needed to browse, apply, or switch themes and wallpapers.
• The editor's Capture desktop helper needs at least one screenshot tool on PATH: spectacle, grim, gnome-screenshot, scrot, or maim. The first one that exists is used. Without any of them the button reports a capture failure; everything else keeps working.

Usage

1. Enable the plugin in Settings → Plugins.

2. Add a Theme Switcher bar widget, a control center shortcut, or run:

   noctalia msg panel-toggle theblackdon/theme-switcher:carousel
   

3. In the carousel, click a theme card to apply it immediately (palette source + selection, wallpaper, and templates). Use the pencil button on a card to edit it, the plus button to add a new one.

4. The editor lets you pick a palette source (built-in, wallpaper, community, or custom), the matching palette or generator scheme, one or more wallpapers, a screenshot path (including a "Capture desktop" helper), and a title. Open the editor directly with:

   noctalia msg panel-toggle theblackdon/theme-switcher:editor
   

5. The wallpaper shortcut opens the wallpapers panel, which lets you browse and switch the wallpapers of the currently applied theme without re-applying the palette. Open it with:

   noctalia msg panel-toggle theblackdon/theme-switcher:wallpapers
   

6. The random shortcut applies a random wallpaper from the currently applied theme with a single click.

Keyboard bindings

Wallpaper switching is reachable over IPC via the always-running wallpaper-ipc service, so you can bind these to keys as KWin/KineticWE custom shortcuts (Command/URL action):

noctalia-kwe msg plugin theblackdon/theme-switcher:wallpaper-ipc all random
noctalia-kwe msg plugin theblackdon/theme-switcher:wallpaper-ipc all next
noctalia-kwe msg plugin theblackdon/theme-switcher:wallpaper-ipc all apply "Rose Pine"
noctalia-kwe msg panel-toggle theblackdon/theme-switcher:carousel
noctalia-kwe msg panel-toggle theblackdon/theme-switcher:wallpapers
noctalia-kwe msg panel-toggle theblackdon/theme-switcher:editor

Use :wallpaper-ipc for random/next/apply. Dispatching to the :wallpapers panel only works while that panel is open; a service is always ready.

apply takes a theme id (the slug of its title, e.g. rose-pine) or its title ("Rose Pine"), case-insensitively. Partial matches work when unambiguous.

Use noctalia instead of noctalia-kwe if that is the binary name on your system.

How a theme is applied

Applying a theme sets the active wallpaper first, then runs noctalia msg color-scheme-set <source> <palette> to switch the palette, and finally noctalia msg templates-apply to re-render the configured templates. A theme can hold several wallpapers; the active one is selected in the walls panel.

Screenshots

Carousel	Editor	Wallpapers

Notes

• Community palettes are listed from the Noctalia palette catalog over HTTP, with an offline fallback to the plugin's cached copy and the shell's community-palette cache.
• Custom palettes are read from ~/.config/noctalia/palettes/*.json.
• Themes are stored in the plugin's data directory (themes.json).
• Capture desktop runs the screenshot tool found on PATH directly (no shell) and writes the PNG to ~/Pictures/Screenshots, then stores that path in the theme. It is the only thing this plugin writes outside its data directory, and it only runs when you press the button.
• Applying a theme spawns the shell CLI (noctalia, or noctalia-kwe on this build) for color-scheme-set and templates-apply. Wallpaper changes go through the shell's own noctalia.setWallpaper API.