[BUG] GTK theme/icons/font not detected on standalone WMs (Hyprland, sway, niri, i3)

[HashimAbdulaziz]

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• I have checked the FAQ but the issue is not covered

Description

On a standalone Wayland compositor, Theme/Icons/Font report "not found" even though the values are set in org.gnome.desktop.interface.

$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme
'adw-gtk3-dark'
$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme
'WhiteSur-dark'
$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name
'Adwaita Sans 11'

$ fastfetch --structure Theme:Icons:Font:Cursor --logo none
Theme: No themes found
Icons: No icons could be found
Font: No fonts found
Cursor: Bibata-Modern-Classic (24px)      <- cursor resolves, the rest don't

Root cause

detectGTKFromSettings() (src/detection/gtk_qt/gtk.c) is an else if chain on wmde->dePrettyName covering XFCE / Cinnamon / MATE / GNOME-family / Enlightenment. Anything else falls through to GTK config-file parsing, which no longer holds these values.

The trigger is an unmatched DE name, not an empty one. Instrumenting the function on Hyprland gives dePrettyName="" (len=0), but varying XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP on the same machine shows non-empty names fail identically:

Hyprland  ->  dePrettyName=""        Theme: No themes found
sway      ->  dePrettyName="sway"    Theme: No themes found
river     ->  dePrettyName="river"   Theme: No themes found
niri      ->  dePrettyName="niri"    Theme: No themes found
i3        ->  dePrettyName="i3"      Theme: No themes found
GNOME     ->  dePrettyName="GNOME"   Theme: adw-gtk3-dark [GTK2/3/4]

Only the Hyprland row is a live session — the others were produced by setting XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP on this Hyprland machine. The branch reads only that value so it exercises the same path, but I haven't run those compositors and don't want to claim I have.

The GNOME row is the useful part: one env var flips it, and the existing ffSettingsGetGnome() calls read the correct values. The data is reachable; only the branch is missing.

Proposed fix

Adding an else that calls the same ffSettingsGetGnome keys produces:

Theme: adw-gtk3-dark [GTK2/3/4]
Icons: WhiteSur-dark [GTK2/3/4]
Font: Adwaita Sans (11pt) [GTK2/3/4]

} else if (!ffStrbufIgnCaseEqualS(&wmde->dePrettyName, FF_DE_PRETTY_PLASMA)) {
    themeName = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "gtk-theme", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_STRING).strValue;
    iconsName = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/icon-theme", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "icon-theme", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_STRING).strValue;
    fontName = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/font-name", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "font-name", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_STRING).strValue;
    cursorTheme = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/cursor-theme", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "cursor-theme", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_STRING).strValue;
    cursorSize = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/cursor-size", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "cursor-size", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_INT).intValue;
}

Plasma is excluded deliberately. A bare else silently changed KDE from No themes found to adw-gtk3-dark, because Plasma isn't in the chain; since kde-gtk-config manages GTK settings there it could misreport, and I have no KDE system to check on. XFCE, MATE and Cinnamon are unaffected either way.

Degradation is clean: no DBus session bus still resolves via GSettings; no schemas and no DBus returns No themes found at exit 0 with no crash; empty HOME resolves via system schemas.

wallpaper is left unset on purpose — the GNOME branch fills it from org.gnome.desktop.background, but on standalone WMs that's owned by hyprpaper/swww. Output verified identical before and after.

Would you take a change of that shape, or would you rather standalone WMs keep reporting no theme?

Version used

fastfetch 2.66.0 (x86_64) — also reproduced on dev (2.67.0-15)

Bug prevalence

Always

Regression

No

Installation

Package manager

Package manager

dnf

Screenshots

No visual changes — output shown inline above.

Configuration

Stock; no ~/.config/fastfetch/ present.

System information

OS: Fedora Linux 43 (Workstation Edition) x86_64
Kernel: Linux 7.1.6-101.fc43.x86_64
DE: No DE found
WM: Hyprland 0.51.1 (Wayland)
Theme: No themes found
Icons: No icons could be found
Font: No fonts found
Cursor: Bibata-Modern-Classic (24px)

Features built-in

linux-headers 7.1.3
threads
vulkan
wayland
xcb-randr
xrandr
drm
gio
dconf
eet
dbus
imagemagick7
chafa
zlib
sqlite3
rpm
egl
glx
opencl
libpulse
libddcutil
libelf
libzfs
va-drm
va-x11
vdpau
System yyjson
linux/videodev2
Embedded wcwidth
Lua 5.4

[CarterLi]

} else if (!ffStrbufIgnCaseEqualS(&wmde->dePrettyName, FF_DE_PRETTY_PLASMA)) {
themeName = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "gtk-theme", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_STRING).strValue;
iconsName = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/icon-theme", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "icon-theme", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_STRING).strValue;
fontName = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/font-name", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "font-name", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_STRING).strValue;
cursorTheme = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/cursor-theme", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "cursor-theme", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_STRING).strValue;
cursorSize = ffSettingsGetGnome("/org/gnome/desktop/interface/cursor-size", "org.gnome.desktop.interface", nullptr, "cursor-size", FF_VARIANT_TYPE_INT).intValue;
}

So applyGTKSettings(result, themeName, iconsName, fontName, cursorTheme, cursorSize, wallpaper); will only be used for KDE. It's a rather large change that I need to handle with care.

Can you explain in detail why we want to report GNOME settings even on non-GNOME desktop environment?