Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 LTS reduce icon size

Solution 1:

The themes are now in binary files gresource, you would need to either unpack the gresource file, make your change and put it back together.

mkdir ~/shell-theme and create extractgst.sh inside this directory and paste the following to that file.

#! /bin/sh

workdir="${HOME}/shell-theme"
gst="/usr/share/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-theme.gresource"
mkdir theme

for r in `gresource list $gst`; do
  gresource extract $gst $r >$workdir${r/#\/org\/gnome\/shell/}
done

Execute above script you will get all source file from gnome-shell-theme.gresource.

Use your editor and edit gnome-shell.css file.

And fix values as the following(You can choose other values).

.icon-grid {
    spacing: 18px;                       /* was 36px */
    -shell-grid-item-size: 35px;         /* was 70px */
}

.all-app .icon-grid {
    -shell-grid-item-size: 59px;         /* was 118px */
}

.all-app .overview-icon {
    icon-size: 48px;                     /* was 96px */
}

Now you have to build new gnome-shell-theme.gresource

Download gnome-shell-theme.gresource.xml from github and put it into your ~/shell-theme/theme directory

cd ./theme
glib-compile-resources gnome-shell-theme.gresource.xml

Then copy the resulting gnome-shell-theme.gresource file to the /usr/share/gnome-shell directory.

Detail: HERE and here and bbs.archlinux.org