Overview

I’ve spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to programatically switch themes in the Gnome terminal, so for example I could automatically colour-code a terminal window based on a local instance or container vs, different cloud providers.

It’s easy enough to enumerate profiles but it’s only really possible to change the default profile on-the-fly.

Enumerate Terminal Profiles

  1. We can list all extant terminal profiles by dconf dump-ing /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:

     wmcdonald@fedora:~$ dconf dump /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/
 [/]
 list=['b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9', '7455b36d-c1a6-4be7-ba5e-c9337fe6b1a1', '7e895d7e-17b8-45f5-8dc2-0719fa1b90e7']

 [:7455b36d-c1a6-4be7-ba5e-c9337fe6b1a1]
 background-color='rgb(23,20,33)'
 foreground-color='rgb(208,207,204)'
 use-system-font=false
 use-theme-colors=false
 visible-name='dark'

 [:7e895d7e-17b8-45f5-8dc2-0719fa1b90e7]
 background-color='rgb(47,30,46)'
 bold-color-same-as-fg=true
 foreground-color='rgb(163,158,155)'
 use-system-font=false
 use-theme-colors=false
 visible-name='ubuntu'

 [:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9]
 audible-bell=false
 background-color='rgb(253,246,227)'
 font='Monospace 12'
 foreground-color='rgb(51,64,69)'
 use-system-font=false
 use-theme-colors=false
 visible-name='light'

  2. We can list individual profiles

     wmcdonald@fedora:~$ dconf dump /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:7e895d7e-17b8-45f5-8dc2-0719fa1b90e7/
 [/]
 background-color='rgb(47,30,46)'
 bold-color-same-as-fg=true
 foreground-color='rgb(163,158,155)'
 use-system-font=false
 use-theme-colors=false
 visible-name='ubuntu'

    Note: yes, yes, yes, we’re using Ubuntu-ish terminal colours for Fedora

References