Despite installing a dark variant, the GNOME shell still uses light mode, leading to issues.

[dsaghliani]

Before we start, let me just thank you for the beautiful theme. I've recently installed Linux on a spare drive, and your theme has made my experience with it so much better!

Now, onto the problem...

Problem Description

I installed a dark variant of the theme (Colloid-Dark-Compact), but the OS is still set to use light mode. As a result...

1. ...apps that don't support the theme appear in light mode;
2. ...and in places such as the Application menu, the system shows dark text on a dark background, making it unreadable.

Changing to the dark mode resets the theme to the default.

Issue 1 Illustration

Apps that don't support the theme and fall back to the "normal" render in light mode. (In Tweaks > Appearance, "Legacy Applications" is set to use Colloid-Dark-Compact.

App: Foliate.

Issue 2 Illustration

The Applications menu, and potentially other corners of the system, render dark text. On the dark background, it's unreadable.

System Information

Distribution: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS
GNOME version: 42.1
Windowing System: X11
Graphics Driver: nvidia-driver-510 (510.68.02)

Steps to Reproduce

1. Clone the repo and cd into it.
2. Run ./install.sh --color dark --size compact.
3. Next, run gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme "Colloid-Dark-Compact".
4. Finally, run gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme "Colloid-Dark-Compact".
5. Optionally, install the icon theme and activate it with gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme "Colloid".

The theme should be activated. However, as described above, the system has light mode enabled in the background, causing the aforementioned problems.

Afterward, ~/.config/gtk-4.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0 should now have their own settings.ini files, which has the line, gtk-application-prefer-dark-theme=0. It's possible to change it to 1, re-run the gsettings commands, and log out and back into the shell to reload it. However, that doesn't fix the issue. The shell is still using light mode.