Since KDE SC 4.5 most of the icons in the systemtray - and the icon for the device notifier widget which is not in the systemtray! - are white. It is really bugging me, especially the white device notifier icon outside the tray which I don't want to have inside the tray. Color helps me to better distinguish those tiny icons and IMHO it just looks better when the look of all icons is consistent. The white icons don't seem to be in the oxygen theme. The device-notifier.png is there as it should be (the colored one in all sizes) but the widget doesn't seem to use it anymore. So please how can I change the icons for those widgets and replace the white ones with standard colorful oxygen (or what ever theme is used) icons?

These white icons are supplied by the Plasma theme currently in use. The default KDE theme is located at $KDEDIR/share/apps/desktoptheme/default/. $KDEDIR is usually /usr on most systems. The icons are sourced from the icons/ directory of the currently active theme.

Thanks a lot for the answer! So I need to erase that directory for the default theme as all other themes without own icon directory use it?

It doesn't seem to be possible to use panel icons (it doesn't only affect the systemtray but also the device manager and the battery status widgets outside the tray - especially the latter is not readable in white, even in bigger size) from another theme according to systemsettings theme details...

IMHO plasma themes shouldn't be allowed to change icon settings, that goes much too far. User icon settings always should be in first place. We have icon themes for customizing the icons. Plasma themes should stay in their range.

JaKi wrote:Thanks a lot for the answer! So I need to erase that directory for the default theme as all other themes without own icon directory use it?

I suggest deleting specific icons in the folder since there are some that you want to leave, the notification "(i)" button, for example.

JaKi wrote:IMHO plasma themes shouldn't be allowed to change icon settings, that goes much too far. User icon settings always should be in first place. We have icon themes for customizing the icons. Plasma themes should stay in their range.

I agree, and I'm sure there are quite a few other people that do too, since I saw the instructions to delete the grey icons in quite a few places. However, when I reported that back in the Beta 1 phase, I was told that "not only is it a purposeful design decision but has been met with pretty much overwhelmingly positive feedback."

Glad to see I'm not the only one who dislikes that!

There should be an easy way to turn those plasma theme icons off without deleting them. As a pure user without admin privileges you are helpless in that case. And even if you are your own admin you have to re-delete the icons in case the theme gets updated.

At least "they" should make a difference if the icon is in the tray or not. Not in the tray = normal colored icon! E.g. device.svgz is used for the devicemanager even if it is not a tray widget but in the panel. And that really looks more than ugly between all normal icons! And I guess the responsible person didn't try to read the battery state on the white icon when it is in the panel and not in the tray...

JaKi wrote:And I guess the responsible person didn't try to read the battery state on the white icon when it is in the panel and not in the tray...

Moreover, it's a bit inconsistent. Take kmix for example. The icon in the systray is the new white type. If you let the pointer hover above it, the plasma popup contains the old style of icon.

I'm curious about how many people like or don't like the new icons, so I made a poll:
http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=90106

I renamed the unwanted icons - and now the battery status doesn't have an icon anymore. Where is the colored icon and why isn't it used instead? The devicemanager shows the oxygen icon as it should, the same do kmix, networkmanager, nepomuk and klipper. Just the battery status is without icon.

I believe that the battery monitor uses Plasma theming more intensively, so the needed elements may be missing. I would recommend looking for files named similar to "battery" in KDE 4.4 installation ( same path )

There are no different icons in the 4.4 and 4.5 version except the icons-directory in the 4.5 theme. I took the battery-oxygen.svgz (which is the colored version) and renamed the objects in it (removed the word "layer" at the end of each object name). Then copied it from the widgets folder to the icons folder and renamed it battery.svgz. Works.

Requires a great deal of energy just to get the icons one wants. If it would be in the icon theme you could just place other icons with the same name in your ~/.kde/share/icons/oxygen/scalable folder and it never will be overwritten. Or I could choose another icon theme.

Really, no default icon should be icon theme independent. All icons should be replacable by the user chosen icon theme.

I believe you can do a similar thing with Plasma themes. Simply copy and rename the default one to ~/.kde/share/apps/plasma/themes/<name of theme> ( the same directory that GHNS uses )

Then select that in Plasma's theme selection.

No, that does not work for the icons. That was the first thing I tried.

Hopefully there'll come a plasma theme option like "use icon theme's icons for systemtray".

Alec wrote:

JaKi wrote:However, when I reported that back in the Beta 1 phase, I was told that "not only is it a purposeful design decision but has been met with pretty much overwhelmingly positive feedback."

Overwhelmingly positive feedback by who - the development team? That's likely, as I'm sure that those in the wild (us) feel quite differently. Give me my colored System Tray icons back!

Can you please edit your quotation as it wasn't me who wrote that?

bcooksley wrote:These white icons are supplied by the Plasma theme currently in use. The default KDE theme is located at $KDEDIR/share/apps/desktoptheme/default/. $KDEDIR is usually /usr on most systems. The icons are sourced from the icons/ directory of the currently active theme.

thanks! those default icons, especially for kmix, looks ugly with my theme settings. somewhy default icons overrides icons from another icon themes.