Changing the sidepane background color in Nautilus

Changing the sidepane background color in Nautilus

Is it possible to change the sidepane background color for Places? I want it to blend, if i hit the dropdown above the sidepane and select information, this blends with the navigation toolbars. I'd like that same effect for the Places option.

Solution 1:

Edit your existing ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file, or create one if it doesn't exist. This file will let you override parts of your selected GTK+ theme.

gedit ~/.gtkrc-2.0

Add the following style

style "treeview-modified"
{   
    GtkTreeView::even_row_color   = "#yourcolor"
}
widget "*NautilusNavigationWindow*" style "treeview-modified"

where "#yourcolor" is obviously the color you want; #F2F1F0 is the Ambiance / Radiance toolbar color that you may be looking to blend with. You can sample other colors using Agave, the GIMP color picker or any color picker tool.

Note that due to the side pane having a frame in all modes except "Information", it will not exactly blend in other modes the way it does in that mode; at least with the default themes. With some further hacking you may be able to work around the outline color and get it to blend exactly the same way if that's what you want.

You can find out more about theme styles in the GTK Theming Tutorial.

Solution 2:

Actually the way that is described in this answer will not only color your Nautilus Side Panel but it will also change the colors in the List View on the main Nautilus File Manager Window. In order to avoid it you would have to do something like this.

style "nautilus-sidebar"
{
    GtkWidget::separator-height = 1
    GtkTreeView::horizontal-separator = 4 # add extra the padding
    GtkTreeView::vertical-separator = 1
        GtkTreeView::even_row_color   = "#E1EAEE" #this is the color MAC OSX 10.5 uses
}
widget_class "*Nautilus*Side*.GtkWidget" style "nautilus-sidebar"

However the drawback on doing it this way is that it makes the background color of your Save, Import, Export dialog pop-up boxes have the same Side Panel Background(It does not look too bad). I think it has to do with the fact that we both used the "even_row_color".

I tried using GtkTreeView = "#E1EAEE" but it does not seem to work.