How to make selected tab in terminal more prominent

Question

Something about the color scheme changed in 11.04, and now it's very difficult for me to tell which tab is the selected one.

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On my screen, the colors look more similar the further down I slouch in my chair (i.e. angle of view).

If I change the color scheme the problem is solved, but that solution is too extreme for me. Is there a way to just change the color of the selected tab in terminal, or otherwise make it more prominent?

UPDATE: In 12.10 the accepted solution doesn't work. Can anyone fix it?

I confirm, In 12.10 the accepted solution doesn't work. Bug opened here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/762349 — Alessio, Dec 14 '12 at 09:44
Neither of these solutions is working for me in 12.04. Any ideas? — Lambart, Jan 22 '14 at 21:17
This has been reported as a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/761660 — Jan Nekvasil, Jul 22 '11 at 09:22

David Harkness · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-19T10:02:32.040

89

For 12.10–15.04 you can create a CSS theme for GTK 3.0 as explained in this comment by Kees (kees-vanveen) on the bug report posted above by Alessio.

Create the file ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css

Paste this as the contents using your desired color:

TerminalWindow .notebook tab:active {
    background-color: #def;
}

Close all Terminal windows and relaunch the application to see the change.

edited May 19 '15 at 10:02

answered Feb 07 '13 at 00:07

David Harkness

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Works great -- thanks! As a reminder to anyone trying this solution, you'll need to log out and log back in before changes take effect. – Sam King Jun 06 '13 at 05:56
6

Just closing all terminal windows and reopening a new session worked for me. – sunew Sep 24 '13 at 11:22
@SamKing, you mean logging out and again in to the terminal or the whole (X) session? Because just closing and reopening the terminal worked for me (13.10). – Halil Özgür Dec 14 '13 at 14:58
This works in 13.04 too. – dgmdan Jan 19 '14 at 17:50
3

Confirming this works through 14.10. As long as gnome-terminal uses gtk-3, unless they change the spec this should always be a solution. – balloons Jul 24 '14 at 19:00
For completeness, if I want to make the inactive tabs dimmer (in 14.04 everything's white-ish), what are the CSS selectors for them? – Nick T Jul 30 '14 at 22:18
Ah; you just lop off `:active`, but you still need to style the `:active` pseudoclass as there doesn't seem to be any rules there by default. – Nick T Jul 30 '14 at 22:24
6

You can test the change without closing all terminal windows by starting a new terminal with `gnome-terminal --disable-factory` – Samuli Pahaoja Sep 29 '14 at 09:49
This isn't having any affect for me on 14.10. Anything else that could go wrong? – Sam Brightman Jan 07 '15 at 09:25
1

confirm works on 14.04 – Amos Folarin Apr 15 '15 at 10:11
@SamBrightman Make sure you are using Gnome Terminal and close all terminal windows after making the change. – David Harkness Apr 16 '15 at 19:19
Yes, this works (tested on 15.04). – Sam Brightman May 18 '15 at 18:21
This works fine for `Gnome Terminal`. Any idea how to do this for `Terminator` as well? I am on 14.04. Thanks! – HRJ Jun 13 '15 at 05:14
1

@HRJ Ask a new question to get visibility. Link to this one to let people know you're talking about a different terminal program and don't mark it dupe. – David Harkness Jun 14 '15 at 06:27
1

For a better look, try this answer: http://askubuntu.com/a/406816/421047 – Gobinath Apr 27 '16 at 09:01

htorque · Answer 2 · 2011-05-12T08:42:49.287

17

I'm not that much of a theme hacker, but here's a quick fix:

Create or edit the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 to include the following:

style "gnome_terminal_notebook"
{
  fg[NORMAL] = "#00ff00"
}

widget "*TerminalWindow.*.GtkNotebook*" style "gnome_terminal_notebook"

This will turn the text color of the active tab green. Not very beautiful, but should give you a start.

You could also lighten up the highlighted tab by replacing the fg line with:

bg[NORMAL] = shade (1.25, "#3c3b37")

The downside: this will also make the inner borders brighter.

Note: This will influence every theme you choose in the appearance properties, so don't forget to undo those changes when using another theme.

edited May 12 '11 at 08:42

answered May 05 '11 at 15:25

htorque

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This workaround works perfectly! You can use #4c4b47 for an even brighter background. – Nicolas Raoul May 31 '11 at 14:35
This suggestion does not work on 12.10 Can anyone confirm it does ? – Scott Stensland Feb 28 '13 at 20:21
@ScottStensland - See [my answer](http://askubuntu.com/a/252192/18031) for a solution that works on 12.10. – David Harkness Mar 14 '13 at 06:52
Works for gtk-2.0 based terminal, like my: MATE Terminal 1.8.1 / MATE Desktop Environment 1.8.2 / Ubuntu 14.04 / Kernel Linux 4.2.0-27-generic. Also refer to [this](https://weishi.github.io/blog/2014/09/27/change-tab-color-in-terminator-and-ubuntu-terminal/) for `bg[ACTIVE]` `fg[ACTIVE]` etc. – Weekend Apr 18 '18 at 08:27

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 25 '14 at 15:27

Using Ubuntu's warm grey in https://design.ubuntu.com/brand/colour-palette, this is a small variation of David's:

TerminalWindow .notebook tab {
    background-color: #e2e0dd;
}

TerminalWindow .notebook tab:active {
    background-color: #f2f1f0;
}

The color of other tabs here is slightly darker.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 05 '11 at 15:08

You can hack the theme and change colors that way. I did that years ago when a theme I otherwise liked didn't have enough contrast.

Themes installed system-wide live in /usr/share/themes, while your own themes live in ~/.themes. If the theme you're modifying is a system-wide theme, I suggest copying it to ~/.themes and renaming it before making changes. Otherwise, your changes will get overwritten the next time the package responsible for those files gets upgraded.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 06 '16 at 00:51

0

For Ubuntu 16.04, create a file named ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css, and place the following into it:

TerminalWindow .notebook tab:active {
    background-color: #b0c0f0;
}

Credit: http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2014/highlighting-the-active-tab-in-gnome-terminal/

answered May 06 '16 at 00:51

krokodil

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This is the same as the accepted answer. – itsadok May 07 '16 at 07:02

How to make selected tab in terminal more prominent

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