The new Inkscape 1.0 is here! And there are tons of great new features, including the ability to easily customize your user interface to your liking. These UI customizations include the ability to set up a Dark Theme, which both looks cooler and is easier on the eyes for those of you who stare at computer screens all day (like me).
In this Help Article, I show you how to customize your Inkscape user interface for the new Dark Theme. I have also included a video version of this tutorial below, which I created using Inkscape 1.0 Beta (the process is the same as Inkscape 1.0). If you prefer to read the article, which is available in many languages via the language dropdown in the top left corner, you can skip over the video.
For starters, you’ll of course need to open Inkscape up on your computer. I like to do this by simply typing “Inkscape” in my search bar on Windows (red arrow in the image above), or you can search “Inkscape” in your Finder window on a MAC inside the Applications folder. Double click the Inkscape icon to open it (blue arrow).
Once Inkscape is open, go to Edit>Preferences (red arrow in the image above – or use the shortcut key shift+ctrl+p). This will bring up your preferences dialogue.
On the left side of this dialogue, navigate over to where it says “Interface” and click the dropdown icon (a.k.a. the “twirl” icon – it’s shaped like a triangle) to reveal more options.
Click the “Theme” option.
Here, you have two options for setting up a Dark theme. Under “Theme Changes,” you can simply check the box labeled “Use dark theme” (red arrow in the image above), and your UI will automatically switch over to the dark theme version (if you have your current theme set to “System Theme” – which is the default theme).
The second option is to use the “Change Gtk theme” dropdown (blue arrow in the image above) to select a new color for your theme. The “High Contrast Inverse” option is the dark theme option. Selecting this option will change your UI colors over to a darker color. Additionally, the “Adwaita” option and “System Theme” option both support the Dark Theme checkbox (in other words, they support both a lighter theme and a dark theme).
Once you have the Dark Theme enabled, you may also want to switch your icons over to a single color so that they contrast better against the Dark Theme. This is entirely optional. To accomplish this, simply navigate over to the “Display Icons” section (red arrow in the image above) below the Theme Changes section and check the box labeled “Use symbolic icons.” This will switch your icons over from multi-colored to a single color.
By default, your icons color will be white. However, you can uncheck the box labeled “Use default colors for icons” (blue arrow in the image above), then click the “Icon Color” box (red arrow in the image below) to select a new color if you’d like to customize the color to something else.
This will bring up a color dialogue where you can manually create a color or enter a HEX code (blue arrow in the image above) for a color if you already have one.
That’s it for this tutorial! If you liked it, you can check out my other Inkscape Video Tutorials or my GIMP Tutorials.
