I should preface this by saying that I do not use "KDE" the way people normally do. I run a couple of KDE programs, ksysguard, konsole, kate and dolphin, all in 4.13.3. I don't run systemsettings but I could in theory install it if the operation requires it. But I'd rather have a solution that allows me to do this by simply editing the files inside of ~/.kde

I want to remove all icons, just an icon theme that does not display any. Is there a setting for this? And I mean all icons if at all possible, everything that comes out of an icon theme just removed and replaced with nothing. Ideally the text next to it, if it exist moving to fill in the void but that isn't needed.

If it requires a hack of making an icon theme that is filled with empty icons then that would be acceptable, but I'd rather just cleanly remove them.

Did mine once, mistakenly. You won't like it.
Goto the current icon you set in

Code: Select all

/usr/share/icons/the_icon_dir

and purge everything there or in

Code: Select all

~/.icons/the_icon_dir

Well, it removes them, which is a visual improvement, it just doesn't slide the text to fill up the vacuum.

I'm beginning to think there actually is no real implemented option to not use icons, is that true?

Okay, Now I understand what you mean. I'm not sure of that

Yeah, I thought so, seems really weird that there is no option.

Part of the reason I want to remove the icons is because I can't find a theme that I find pretty and making one myself for _all_ those things is a lot of work, the other is that it just takes up space. The name of the thing is right next to the icon, why would I need an icon to tell me?

Checked out the Numix icon theme? It's cool for me and the only icon theme that I see updated like daily with app icons

https://github.com/numixproject/numix-icon-theme-circle

There is an option to show icons on buttons and menus, or not. You may find it at system settings > application style > widget style > fine tuning. No idea how to access this option directly, but I'm sure there is a way.
And probably not all applications follow this setting (or I'm completely wrong). For instance, Dolphin's toolbar still show icons when I uncheck both options.

Turns out I already had those options turned off, but there are still icons inside say the dolphin file manager:

Also:

Code: Select all

[KDE]
ShowDeleteCommand=false
ShowIconsInMenuItems=false
ShowIconsOnPushButtons=false
SingleClick=true

inside ~/.kde4/share/config/kdeglobals

As for Numix, Numix is exactly what I find aesthetically displeasing about most icon themes. A wild cacophony of non matching colours providing a distraction. But the main issue is not the aesthetics but just that it takes up space.