Looks and themes

What it is

How WolOS looks is three choices, from small to large:

• Light, Dark or Auto (Auto is light from 7:00 and dark from 19:00) and an accent colourThe one colour WolOS uses for what is selected or switched on: buttons, switches, highlights. You pick it in Settings > Appearance., in System Settings > Appearance.
• A themeA set of colours that restyles the whole desktop and your apps at once.: a complete set of colours for the desktop, window borders, the lock screen, the terminal and your apps. WolOS ships 21 of them; pluginsA small add-on for the desktop: a menu bar item, a widget, a search result or a theme. It runs in a sandbox. can add more.
• A theme from your wallpaper, made from the colours of your desktop picture in one click.

The theme picker (Ctrl+Super+T) shows every theme as a small preview card, so you can switch without opening Settings.

Why WolOS does it this way

People change a look far more often than they change anything else, so it has to be safe and quick: one click, the whole system at once, and an undo. A theme that only restyled the desktop's own apps would leave every other window looking out of place, so one choice restyles every kind of app, the terminal included. And every theme, including the one made from your picture, is checked so text stays readable on its background.

How

Pick a theme

1. Press Ctrl+Super+T, or open System Settings > Appearance.
2. Choose Light, Dark or Auto (1), and click an accent colour (2): Violet (the default), Lake, Orchid, Rose, Tangerine, Marigold, Jade or Slate.
3. Or click a theme in the gallery (3). The desktop and your apps change at once. Themes that plugins bring are listed after WolOS's own, under "From plugins" in the picker (with the plugin's name after each) and "From Plugins" in System Settings.
4. Escape closes the picker.

The accent colours apply to the WolOS Light and Dark looks; a theme brings its own. In Settings the footnote says it: "A theme restyles the whole desktop and your apps at once. Accent colors apply to the WolOS Light and Dark looks."

Switch between light and dark from anywhere with Dark Mode in Control Center; see Dark Mode.

A theme from your wallpaper

1. Choose a desktop picture (Settings > Wallpaper, or Choose… on the Wallpaper row of Appearance).
2. Press Make Theme on the row Theme from your wallpaper ("Colors taken from the desktop picture, readable everywhere.").
3. The new theme, called From Your Wallpaper, is applied at once.

The colours are picked so every text and background pair stays readable, so a dark or busy picture still gives a theme you can read.

Make your own

Make a theme > Open Studio in System Settings > Appearance opens Theme Studio, where you build one from scratch and share it as a plugin (The Maker).

Take it back

Every change of look is recorded: System Settings > Restore > Recent Changes > Undo takes it back (Backups and undo).

Blur, corners and animations

System Settings > Effects & Looks sets how glassy and soft the desktop is: blur and transparency behind panels, rounded corners, window borders and shadows, and animations, with presets that set all of them at once. System Settings > Accessibility > Reduce motion turns most animations off.

A worked example

Alice likes the look of her beach photo. She opens Settings > Appearance, chooses Dark, picks a blue accent, then clicks the theme made from her wallpaper. The windows, the Dock, the terminal and the lock screen all take the colours of the photo. She dislikes it next week and picks another theme from the picker with Ctrl+Super+T.

If something goes wrong