Xfce Forum

daffyduck

Member

Registered: 2026-06-25

Posts: 44

Instructions for installing themes

This post is for both users and theme developers.

The Xfce wiki page at https://wiki.xfce.org/howto/xfwm4_theme appears to contain outdated information, so here is a quick guide to installing themes.

Xfce 4.18 and later apparently follow the current XDG standards. According to those standards, user-installed themes should be placed in a specific directory.

You can find the correct directory with this Bash command:

echo "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/themes"

Commonly, but not always, the result is: ~/.local/share/themes

By contrast, the Xfce wiki incorrectly lists ~/.themes, which is obsolete, and $XDG_DATA_DIRS/themes, which is not a single directory and also does not contain the recommended location.

This post contains an example of how to install an Xfwm4 theme:
https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=19313

----- The latest XDG standard:
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir/latest/
https://publish.obsidian.md/kaas-publis … cification

Last edited by daffyduck (2026-06-28 14:53:37)

---

=                       &```&
                       .&_ oO_&-..--.
                     ( __         -/..--'      daffyduck
                       . ' -__- '