dotfiles/.config/gnome-settings

GNOME Settings

This folder contains my GNOME settings split into several *.ini files by logical group.

Machine-specific overrides may live in local/*.ini and are loaded last.

All paths inside the files are absolute, anchored at the root of dconf. Therefore, they must always be loaded anchored at the root as well:

dconf load / < <file>

restore-gnome automates this upon every login (via the restore-gnome.service systemd user unit).

Process:

1. Back up the current dconf state into ~/.local/state/gnome-settings-backups/
2. Reset all managed sub-trees, so that keys removed from the *.ini files do not linger in the live state, and
3. Load every *.ini here, then every local/*.ini.

verify-dconf lists keys diverging between the live state and the *.ini files, and can be used to find live keys worth adopting.

Color Palette

A teal ramp of 7 stops from light to dark, plus two neutral tones for the shell chrome, plus 5 accent hues with 2 shades each for the terminal ANSI colors.

All colors except the two neutrals can be verified with derive-palette.py to be derived from GNOME's "teal" accent alone.

The ramp is uniform in perceived lightness (i.e., OKLCH), with the accent centered by arithmetic: In dark mode it reads light-to-dark (e.g., text on dark surfaces), in light mode dark-to-light.

Translucent colors are always alpha-variants of a stop, used for tile previews and tab decorations by forge.

Stop	Hex	RGB	Role
1	#DDECF0	rgb(221, 236, 240)	Foreground and text, focused borders
2	#96D0DD	rgb(150, 208, 221)	Quiet chrome: bar and unfocused windows
3	#59B1C4	rgb( 89, 177, 196)	Tile previews, borders of active elements
4	#2190A4	rgb( 33, 144, 164)	Accent
5	#006E81	rgb( 0, 110, 129)	Stacked/tabbed layouts, tab decorations
6	#004D5C	rgb( 0, 77, 92)	Dimmed and sub-menu backgrounds
7	#002E37	rgb( 0, 46, 55)	Dark base: terminal background
gray	#2E2E32	rgb( 46, 46, 50)	Surfaces: bar and menu backgrounds
base	#000000	rgb( 0, 0, 0)	Screensaver, shadows

Stop 4 is GNOME's "teal", one of nine built-in accent colors that cannot be changed (see --accent-teal in libadwaita). "gray" is the dark header-bar and sidebar background in libadwaita (see --headerbar-bg-color and --sidebar-bg-color).

Terminal Accents

Derived at the anchor's chroma, with lightness solved for WCAG 4.5:1 against stop 7; "bright" is the same hue lifted by 0.10 in lightness.

Hue	Normal	Bright
red	#C87B75	#EA9A93
yellow	#A38F45	#C2AF64
green	#669D68	#84BC85
blue	#6D91CC	#8BB0ED
magenta	#B57DB0	#D69CD0