Mint-theme-switcher

Simple bash scripts to toggle light/dark mode on Linux Mint (XFCE) — both the system theme (GTK + xfwm4) and the icon theme.

Requirements

• Linux Mint with the XFCE desktop
• xfconf-query
• gsettings
• notify-send (desktop notifications)

Scripts

toggle-theme.sh

Toggles the XFCE system theme (GTK + xfwm4) between light and dark.

Recognizes the Mint-L-* / Mint-Y-* theme family (e.g. Mint-L-Dark-Red ↔ Mint-L-Red). If the current theme doesn't match any known pattern, Adwaita-dark is used as the target.

It also sets the prefer-dark / prefer-light preference in org.x.apps.portal, used by Firefox and other apps running through xdg-desktop-portal (the xdg-desktop-portal-xapp backend) — the GTK theme name alone isn't enough for them.

Usage:

./toggle-theme.sh

toggle-icon-theme.sh

Toggles the XFCE icon theme between light (remembered variant, default Mint-Y) and dark (Papirus-Dark) — since there is no official Mint-Y-Dark theme.

The current light icon theme is remembered in the state file ~/.local/state/icon-theme-toggle-light, so switching back to light mode restores the exact variant that was active before.

Usage:

./toggle-icon-theme.sh

Installation

Copy the scripts to a directory in your PATH, e.g.:

cp toggle-theme.sh toggle-icon-theme.sh ~/.local/bin/
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/toggle-theme.sh ~/.local/bin/toggle-icon-theme.sh

You can also bind them to a keyboard shortcut in XFCE settings (Settings → Keyboard → Application Shortcuts).

License

Open Source