Themes
A Based theme is an Omarchy theme: the same folder, the same colors.toml, and themes published
for Omarchy work unchanged. Omarchy's own pages on themes,
extra themes and
making your own apply.
What Based adds is desktop-sync, which carries each switch past the terminal to the desktop's own
settings and to the boot and login screens.
Based Workstation and Based Poweruser carry the theme engine, and both start on Tokyo Night, Omarchy's default. Only Omarchy's stock themes ship. The Retro editions keep their own look and have no theme engine.
Switching
omarchy theme list
omarchy theme set "Tokyo Night"
Or from the Omarchy menu: Style, then Theme. On Poweruser Super+Shift+Ctrl+Space opens the
theme picker directly. On Workstation the menu is Super+Space or the Omarchy icon in the panel's
tray. Your own themes go in ~/.config/omarchy/themes, and Install, then Style, then
Theme takes a theme's Git address.
What follows a switch
Nothing needs a reboot or a new login. How far a switch reaches depends on the desktop:
| Poweruser | Workstation | |
|---|---|---|
| terminal and what runs in it: Ghostty, tmux, Neovim, the prompt, btop, lazygit | yes | yes |
| the bar, the lock screen, notifications, sway's borders | yes | no bar or lock of Omarchy's |
| GTK and libadwaita apps, Qt apps | yes | GNOME's accent colour and light or dark setting |
| Zen, Chromium, VS Code and Cursor | yes | no: they keep GNOME's look |
| icons | yes | no: Zorin's Appearance app picks them |
| the wallpaper | yes | yes |
| the boot splash, the boot menu and the login screen | yes | yes |
A theme never sets the cursor or the fonts, and never swaps one kind of look for another, such as Adwaita for Breeze: it changes colours. A change you make by hand afterwards sticks until the next switch. Set a different accent in GNOME Settings and it stays until you pick a theme again.
An account that isn't an administrator is asked for an administrator's password before the boot screens change.
Wallpaper
On Poweruser Super+Ctrl+Space opens the background picker, and so does Style, then
Background in the menu on both editions. From a terminal:
omarchy theme bg set ~/Pictures/whatever.png
Each theme carries its own pictures, and picking one of those keeps the wallpaper following the theme. Pick anything else, GNOME Settings included, and it stays until the next theme switch, which puts the new theme's picture back. To hand it back to the theme sooner:
desktop-sync reattach wallpaper
Light and dark
desktop-sync mode toggle
light and dark work too, and so does the light or dark switch in GNOME Settings. If the current
theme has a light or dark twin, the flip switches to it. If it doesn't, the theme's colours stay and
only what has its own light and dark variants follows.
Holding the boot screens
An administrator can hold the boot screens while the desktop stays free to change, in
/etc/desktop-sync/config.toml. Each screen is its own target:
[target.grub]
sync = false
[target.plymouth]
sync = false
[target.gdm]
sync = false
Or keep them on one theme whatever anyone switches to:
[boot]
theme = "tokyo-night"
Only the file in /etc counts for these. A user's own desktop-sync config can't change them.