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KDE is removing all colorful third-party app icons from its Breeze icon theme

29 points by bundie 1y ago

lexlambda 1y ago
Icon themes modifying the developer-provided icons was always a strange thing to me in many Linux distributions. Even often hard or hidden to disable this behavior. My workaround already was using Breeze, since it does the least modification compared to other themes available by default. Glad to see it continue in this direction.
- Gualdrapo 1y ago
  Well, the point of custom icon themes is, you know, customize an icon theme. That being said, it's expected the default icon theme does little to nothing about customizing a third party icon. When I was involved (briefly) with the KDE VDG back when 5 was about to be launched I proposed a icon style that looked completely different of what Breeze looks right now - maybe something in between of what Oxygen looks like and Breeze looks like. But Jens Reutenberg told me it couldn't go in that direction since they needed to ship certain icons "as-is", like the Firefox one, so it was better to do something that could fit anything so those "special" icons wouldn't look out of place. Some people like to diss on flat/minimalism styles but for some situations there is a reason they look that way.
  - panzi 1y ago
    It takes me at least 3 times as long to find what I need with these minimalist monochrome icons, though. I always opt to the more colorful ones, if possible.
    - bmacho 1y ago
      Can't you just right click an icon, set it to whatever you want (including the original one), and then lock it so subsequent theme changes won't change it? DE people are moving in all the wrong directions :/ The submission title makes it a bigger deal than it is, the article clarifies that "The team reasoned that overriding another developer's branding is rude, and it also lacks the resources to maintain the icons as branding changes over time." and "Anyone who misses the old look is welcome to create a new icon theme and upload it to the KDE Store.". Nothing has really changed, especially not newsworthy.
      - panzi 1y ago
        I meant independent of this change about monochrome icon sets in general. Like in settings dialogues the menu on the left side. I'm fastest just going by the colors before I have parsed anything else. But yes, also the same applies in the context menu -> open with. So I welcome them not replacing the original app icons with monochrome ones. At first I read the news the wrong way around.
    - tomstockmail 1y ago
      As I understand it from reading the original post, they are leaving the third party apps default icon. They're not overiding with monochrome icons. Bad title by a probable AI rewrite, please read the original KDE blog post linked elsewhere in the thread. This is KDE's decision on their Breeze theme. Distributions can ship the icon set with third party icons if they want.
      - panzi 1y ago
        Yeah, I indeed read it the wrong way around at first.
nar001 1y ago
It makes sense: Easier to just let people make their own icons for their software, rather than maintain your own, especially when the number of programs is basically endless, so you'd always have to work on it
dkiebd 1y ago
Damn, those screenshots. It’s been so many years and everything looks so unpolished still. Wrong margins, wrong font size, bad font choice, etc. They really need a professional designer.
- kaladin-jasnah 1y ago
  I use KDE every day. It's totally fair if people notice that stuff; I have many friends who do, but not everyone does (like me). I care more about functionality. In which case KDE is just about fine. I guess the people who use KDE don't maybe care about this sort of polish enough, which is why it doesn't get fixed?
  - codr7 1y ago
    Likewise, none of that bothers me as much as Apple's design over function madness lately.
  - bundie 1y ago
    I dunno how to explain it, but to me, Plasma looks "bad" in a "good," or should I say "consistent," way. Like, it looks "bad," but it's honestly not that bad.
  - graemep 1y ago
    I do not care much. I do use third party themes but I suspect they have the same problems. I just have some colour preferences and like pretty icons. I prefer to have third party apps icons overridden by the icon theme, but then I can just use another icon theme.
  - orev 1y ago
    It’s very easy to become blind to UX issues even after just a few exposures to it. Once you “figure it out”, it’s not a problem anymore. The thing is that you can easily lose many potential users who don’t want to give any time at all to “figuring it out”.
  - mih 1y ago
    I am one such user. KDE Plasma has been my daily driver ever since the early days of version 5. Admittedly am not someone with a keen eye for design. There might be some rough edges and the occasional annoyance, but you quickly get used to it. The desktop/windowing system for me is just a means to launch an application which is where I spend most of my time. This often happens to be a browser, a terminal and IDE etc. The design of such apps takes more precedence for me than some margin of the control center items where I couldn't recognize what the problems were if you asked me to. What bothers me more than the visual design is the interaction design ... am trying to find a way to move a sticky note which has been on my desktop for quite some time and the method I used previously no long works. Also some releases ago they mapped 'Alt-F' on the Konsole terminal app to a Find input box, whereas the binding is normally used on terminals for "move cursor forward by a word". This is not a sane default and has caused me to pick Wezterm as my preferred terminal app.
panzi 1y ago
The colors help me to more quickly recognize the icons!!
- verandaguy 1y ago
  I'm not a KDE user, but reading the article, it looks like theme-specific colourful icons for third-party apps will just be falling back to whatever icons originally shipped with the app. You'll still have colourful icons, and hopefully, in most cases, they'll still be easily recognizable.
  - panzi 1y ago
    Yes, thank you. I somehow read it the wrong way around at first. facepalm
Hasnep 1y ago
This article seems to just be a rewording of this one: https://blogs.kde.org/2025/08/16/this-week-in-plasma-a-lot-of-polishing/ https://blogs.kde.org/2025/08/16/this-week-in-plasma-a-lot-o...
- Voultapher 1y ago
  > We’ve removed all of the colorful 3rd-party app icons from the Breeze icon theme. This was a complicated decision, but ultimately we reasoned that overriding 3rd-party app developers’ branding was rude, and we also realized that even if we didn’t care about that, we lacked the interest and resources to maintain the icons as those developers changed their apps’ branding over time. Anyone who feels sad about this is welcome to create an icon theme containing only the old colorful 3rd-party app icons which inherits Breeze, and stick it up on https://store.kde.org https://store.kde.org for others to use. (Nate Graham, link) Honestly I'm fine with that decision. Personally I'm using the Papirus icon theme and the kde store - completely free AFAIK - is a good option for this kind of customization.
simion314 1y ago
I love KDE, I am using it for 2 decades, I can't see the margins or font issues this other people see and I spend my time at the PC looking at the browser, Kate, Intellij and the deskotp panel and maybe a bit at the file manager Dolphin. Why i love KDE is because I can customize it to work as I want not as it wants me to work, I do not bend my fingers to use what soem dude with GIANT ego wants me to use as key shortcuts, I remap them to fit my preferences, and I have a fucking tray icon where I can see if I have unread messages and guess what you can remove the Tray if you are that kind of fascist that hates it because the GIANT ego dude said that tray icons are not cool.
- bundie 1y ago
  > some dude [...] wants me to use as key shortcuts Hahaha

29 points by bundie 1y ago

Icon themes modifying the developer-provided icons was always a strange thing to me in many Linux distributions. Even often hard or hidden to disable this behavior. My workaround already was using Breeze, since it does the least modification compared to other themes available by default. Glad to see it continue in this direction.

Gualdrapo 1y ago
Well, the point of custom icon themes is, you know, customize an icon theme. That being said, it's expected the default icon theme does little to nothing about customizing a third party icon. When I was involved (briefly) with the KDE VDG back when 5 was about to be launched I proposed a icon style that looked completely different of what Breeze looks right now - maybe something in between of what Oxygen looks like and Breeze looks like. But Jens Reutenberg told me it couldn't go in that direction since they needed to ship certain icons "as-is", like the Firefox one, so it was better to do something that could fit anything so those "special" icons wouldn't look out of place. Some people like to diss on flat/minimalism styles but for some situations there is a reason they look that way.
- panzi 1y ago
  It takes me at least 3 times as long to find what I need with these minimalist monochrome icons, though. I always opt to the more colorful ones, if possible.
  - bmacho 1y ago
    Can't you just right click an icon, set it to whatever you want (including the original one), and then lock it so subsequent theme changes won't change it? DE people are moving in all the wrong directions :/ The submission title makes it a bigger deal than it is, the article clarifies that "The team reasoned that overriding another developer's branding is rude, and it also lacks the resources to maintain the icons as branding changes over time." and "Anyone who misses the old look is welcome to create a new icon theme and upload it to the KDE Store.". Nothing has really changed, especially not newsworthy.
    - panzi 1y ago
      I meant independent of this change about monochrome icon sets in general. Like in settings dialogues the menu on the left side. I'm fastest just going by the colors before I have parsed anything else. But yes, also the same applies in the context menu -> open with. So I welcome them not replacing the original app icons with monochrome ones. At first I read the news the wrong way around.
  - tomstockmail 1y ago
    As I understand it from reading the original post, they are leaving the third party apps default icon. They're not overiding with monochrome icons. Bad title by a probable AI rewrite, please read the original KDE blog post linked elsewhere in the thread. This is KDE's decision on their Breeze theme. Distributions can ship the icon set with third party icons if they want.
    - panzi 1y ago
      Yeah, I indeed read it the wrong way around at first.

nar001 1y ago

It makes sense: Easier to just let people make their own icons for their software, rather than maintain your own, especially when the number of programs is basically endless, so you'd always have to work on it

dkiebd 1y ago

Damn, those screenshots. It’s been so many years and everything looks so unpolished still. Wrong margins, wrong font size, bad font choice, etc. They really need a professional designer.

kaladin-jasnah 1y ago
I use KDE every day. It's totally fair if people notice that stuff; I have many friends who do, but not everyone does (like me). I care more about functionality. In which case KDE is just about fine. I guess the people who use KDE don't maybe care about this sort of polish enough, which is why it doesn't get fixed?
- codr7 1y ago
  Likewise, none of that bothers me as much as Apple's design over function madness lately.
- bundie 1y ago
  I dunno how to explain it, but to me, Plasma looks "bad" in a "good," or should I say "consistent," way. Like, it looks "bad," but it's honestly not that bad.
- graemep 1y ago
  I do not care much. I do use third party themes but I suspect they have the same problems. I just have some colour preferences and like pretty icons. I prefer to have third party apps icons overridden by the icon theme, but then I can just use another icon theme.
- orev 1y ago
  It’s very easy to become blind to UX issues even after just a few exposures to it. Once you “figure it out”, it’s not a problem anymore. The thing is that you can easily lose many potential users who don’t want to give any time at all to “figuring it out”.
- mih 1y ago
  I am one such user. KDE Plasma has been my daily driver ever since the early days of version 5. Admittedly am not someone with a keen eye for design. There might be some rough edges and the occasional annoyance, but you quickly get used to it. The desktop/windowing system for me is just a means to launch an application which is where I spend most of my time. This often happens to be a browser, a terminal and IDE etc. The design of such apps takes more precedence for me than some margin of the control center items where I couldn't recognize what the problems were if you asked me to. What bothers me more than the visual design is the interaction design ... am trying to find a way to move a sticky note which has been on my desktop for quite some time and the method I used previously no long works. Also some releases ago they mapped 'Alt-F' on the Konsole terminal app to a Find input box, whereas the binding is normally used on terminals for "move cursor forward by a word". This is not a sane default and has caused me to pick Wezterm as my preferred terminal app.

panzi 1y ago

The colors help me to more quickly recognize the icons!!

verandaguy 1y ago
I'm not a KDE user, but reading the article, it looks like theme-specific colourful icons for third-party apps will just be falling back to whatever icons originally shipped with the app. You'll still have colourful icons, and hopefully, in most cases, they'll still be easily recognizable.
- panzi 1y ago
  Yes, thank you. I somehow read it the wrong way around at first. facepalm

Hasnep 1y ago

This article seems to just be a rewording of this one: https://blogs.kde.org/2025/08/16/this-week-in-plasma-a-lot-of-polishing/ https://blogs.kde.org/2025/08/16/this-week-in-plasma-a-lot-o...

Voultapher 1y ago
> We’ve removed all of the colorful 3rd-party app icons from the Breeze icon theme. This was a complicated decision, but ultimately we reasoned that overriding 3rd-party app developers’ branding was rude, and we also realized that even if we didn’t care about that, we lacked the interest and resources to maintain the icons as those developers changed their apps’ branding over time. Anyone who feels sad about this is welcome to create an icon theme containing only the old colorful 3rd-party app icons which inherits Breeze, and stick it up on https://store.kde.org https://store.kde.org for others to use. (Nate Graham, link) Honestly I'm fine with that decision. Personally I'm using the Papirus icon theme and the kde store - completely free AFAIK - is a good option for this kind of customization.

simion314 1y ago

I love KDE, I am using it for 2 decades, I can't see the margins or font issues this other people see and I spend my time at the PC looking at the browser, Kate, Intellij and the deskotp panel and maybe a bit at the file manager Dolphin. Why i love KDE is because I can customize it to work as I want not as it wants me to work, I do not bend my fingers to use what soem dude with GIANT ego wants me to use as key shortcuts, I remap them to fit my preferences, and I have a fucking tray icon where I can see if I have unread messages and guess what you can remove the Tray if you are that kind of fascist that hates it because the GIANT ego dude said that tray icons are not cool.

bundie 1y ago
> some dude [...] wants me to use as key shortcuts Hahaha