Gnome Java Swing App - Use the Adwaita Window Title Bar (Dark Skin)

Question

Is there a way for a Java Swing desktop application that runs on Gnome (3.14) on Linux (Debian) so that Gnome uses a dark themed (Adwaita) version of the window design?

I use a custom dark Swing look-and-feel, and the only thing that is really annoying is that the title (native Gnome) is very bright. I already used the Tweak tool to use the whole Adwaita system, but this does not apply to applications that clearly do not support a dark theme (for example, Iceweasel, Icedove, Gimp, Libre Office, ...)

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Here is a screenshot that illustrates the problem:

Answer 1

Well, I found a viable solution for my specific system, so I will show what I did here. This is related to this issue . In the accepted answer, you see that the problem is related to legacy Gtk-2 applications, and this seems to include Java. The comment section has a link to Adwaita-Dark clone , which also applies the dark theme to Gtk-2.

Unfortunately, this theme is not synchronized with Debian Jessie / Gnome 3.14, and if you install this theme, most widgets are broken into Iceweasel, Icedove, etc. But. Since I do not care about widgets, but only in the window title bar here, you can selectively use this clone only for window decoration.

So, I downloaded this clone and placed a symlink in ~/.local/share/themes/adwaita-again (here you can use any name). Then, in the Tweak tool, just flip the window style, for example:

And voilà, the title bar of the window title is dark for all applications:

This is also great with IntelliJ IDEA and the Darcula theme. Linux FTW.

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Change It seems that the above approach does not work fully, at least after a reboot. I see bright colors again. Now I have found a simpler option: copy the original Adwaita theme and fix the Metacity file. I created a repository with my patched version.