wish: use colors from dark version of system theme

It's a little unclear to me if you are talking about the gtk theme, or the terminal color scheme as defined in the Preferences -> Profiles -> Colors tab.

For changing the GTK theme see these two helpful links found with minimal google-fu:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1340828
http://urukrama.wordpress.com/2008/07/13/setting-a-custom-gtk-theme-for-specific-applications/

If you are talking about the terminal color scheme, I'd recommend you just create your own custom palette derived from the one you like.

I think you misunderstood my question.

An example: the Gnome terminal use the dark version of the theme, when the option "Global Dark Theme" is activated:
https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/GnomeTweakTool?action=show&redirect=GnomeTweakTool

In Terminator, if I choose the use the colors from the system theme, I get the bright ones, not the dark one.
-> either there should be another option in terminator to use the dark version of the system theme
-> or terminator should be able to use the dark version of the system theme by default.

Something you may not realise: Terminator is GTK 2.x, while (for me at least with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS) gnome-terminal is GTK 3.x. It looks like gnome tweak tool is also for GTK 3.x too. No amount of toggling that switch in GTT will have an effect. I currently can't figure out if gtk 2 has the same "global dark theme" feature, but so far I don't think so.

No, I was not aware Terminator is in GTK 2.x.
I am "only" an user of Terminator and have not look into how it is technically implemented.

Thanks for the information.

As a user, I think this feature could be very valuable. It would allow Terminator to have consistent dark colors with other applications.

Is there a long-term wishlist for Terminator somewhere where I could add this wish?

Hi Yann, you create a bug report (there should be a link just below this text with a green plus symbol) that will create one linked back to the Question, and when it pops up I'll mark it as a wishlist item.

As I said, this may not even be possible with GTK2.0, and would have to wait till the mythical GTK3.0 version.

I have a workaround for this issue, just add these lines to bashrc:

# set dark theme for terminal emulators
if [ "$TERM" == "xterm" ] ; then
  xprop -f _GTK_THEME_VARIANT 8u -set _GTK_THEME_VARIANT "dark" -id `xprop -root | awk '/^_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW/ {print $5}'`
fi

Hope this help.

Leo's answer worked for me but needed a couple of tweaks (sleep to let the window register and a different terminal type):

# Force apps GTK dark theme
# set dark theme for xterm emulators
if [ "$TERM" == "xterm-256color" ] ; then
    sleep .5
    xprop -f _GTK_THEME_VARIANT 8u -set _GTK_THEME_VARIANT "dark" -id `xprop -root | awk '/^_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW/ {print $5}'`
fi

Hi, I was looking for this as well. I tried @l3on's and @robsmithy's solutions. It seems to have worked but only for the prompt. The background still remains the "light" version. Any solutions on how to set the background to "dark" theme as well? Cheers!