Light and dark appearance

GNOME stores the user's preferred color scheme in org.gnome.desktop.interface as color-scheme. Gnoblin reads this preference and reports changes to Lua config, so compositor rules can follow the same choice as applications.

Value	Meaning
default	Follow the desktop's default appearance.
prefer-dark	The user prefers dark application surfaces.
prefer-light	The user prefers light application surfaces.

Set the preference in GNOME Settings → Appearance, or with gsettings:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme prefer-dark

What follows the setting

GTK 4 and libadwaita apps use this preference to choose their light or dark appearance. GTK 3 apps commonly follow the gtk-theme setting, such as Adwaita or Adwaita-dark. The preference does not force every application to change: some apps use their own theme controls, while some non-GTK apps choose to read color-scheme themselves.

Gnoblin does not pick an application theme. It makes the desktop preference available to Lua configs, which can update compositor styling and settings for shells or apps that opt in.

Follow the preference in window rules

Add a later rule for the selected palette. The example keeps all rules already loaded, then replaces the window-rule list with the current palette each time GNOME reports a change:

local base_rules = gnoblin.snapshot().window_rules or {}

gnoblin.on("gnome.interface.color-scheme-changed", function(event)
    local rules = {}
    for i, rule in ipairs(base_rules) do rules[i] = rule end

    local border = event.color_scheme == "prefer-dark" and "#aab2bd99" or "#35405299"
    rules[#rules + 1] = {
        match = {type = "window"},
        borders = {inner_width = 1, inner_color = border},
    }
    gnoblin.configure {window_rules = rules}
end)

Gnoblin also sends the current preference after the config loads, so the first palette applies without waiting for a later desktop change. Other values use the light palette in this short example; branch on default separately if your shell has its own default colors.

See Lua events for the event fields and window effects for border, shadow and blur options.