I notice that there are folder icons of all kind of colors in the oxygen icon theme. But I can not find a way to use these different colors.
Can somebody tell me?

If you right click on a folder > Properties, then click on the Icon, KDE will allow you to change the Icon of this folder.

If you want to change the default icon used by all folders, open System Settings > File Associations. Search for "inode/directory", and select the only result. Then click the icon in the right hand side of the window, and select the new icon you want to be the default and save that.

Thank you very much for your quick answer. Are there only colored folder icons? It would be great if there were also green folder-with-house icons and so forth.
But already I am happy.

bcooksley wrote:If you right click on a folder > Properties, then click on the Icon, KDE will allow you to change the Icon of this folder.

If you want to change the default icon used by all folders, open System Settings > File Associations. Search for "inode/directory", and select the only result. Then click the icon in the right hand side of the window, and select the new icon you want to be the default and save that.

I'd long forgotten how to do this. Thank you for your answer.
Is it possible still to apply an icon change to folders in the places panel and locations not covered by inode/directory?

I have deleted icon-caches in /var/tmp and ~/.kde but without sucess...
Is there another option inode/???

Those locations not covered by inode/directory are likely set seperately.

For the places panel, right clicking on them and selecting "Edit Entry" then following the same procedure to change their Icon should work.

Other folders will likely need to be right clicked on > Properties, and have the same procedure followed once more.

Thank you. I managed a color update of more icons, including panels, however I seem to be stuck with 'preview' mode. eg the pictures folder is set via inode directory but shows what looks like a broken link. See below...



I noticed also while uploading the image the 'secondary' window, you know like find & search windows still used the base folder icon (blue, oxygen).
Any help here much appreciated...

If you disable previews, is the Documents folder icon displayed correctly?

With regards to the Pictures folder - I believe Dolphin has an integrated feature where it generates a montage involving pictures in that folder. I do not know if it uses a hardcoded folder or the folder you have selected as your preference.

With preview off, folder icons show normally. I've since learned that preview images are handled by
Symlinks, Oxygen - KDE 4.8:
application-octet-stream.png -> application-x-python-bytecode.png
application-x-sharedlib.png -> application-x-python-bytecode.png
application-x-object.png -> application-x-python-bytecode.png

And yes, it seems the remainder are hardcoded.

So strictly speaking the inode/directory method no longer applies the changes everywhere. So rather than an apply a "use_it/and fix it" stategy, it seems better to replace the necessary icons as needed.

Nearly finished a short-list of folder-icons/locations that need replacing to achieve this...
next step would be a command to "copy oxygen folder, move to 'copy' folder and apply target png's with a preferred image/colour, rename as a new icon set".

You might notice I'm no coder lol. But it would be nice to leave the original 'oxygen' folder intact, giving you the option to delete the 'copy' oxygen folder and allowing for future KDE icon updates to the original.

I think you might be able to place override icons in your ~/.kde(4)/share/ prefix (just follow the same schema, replacing /usr with ~/.kde or ~/.kde4 depending on your system)

Now that is one great idea bcooksley!

I only ever thought of 'local' installed themes having to be complete set.
But a partial set... why not!

Much Appreciated...

See also Icon Theming over at http://www.kubuntuforums.net