otter-theme-gen

otter-theme-gen watches your wallpaper and writes matching colors to generated-colors.conf. It ships in the otter-shell metapackage. Configure it from the Theme Gen tab in otter-settings, or edit otter-theme-gen.conf by hand.

Usage

otter-theme-gen

Autostart it with otter-wallpaper. Theme generation needs wallpaper state from $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/otter-shell/wallpaper-state.

otter-wallpaper &
otter-theme-gen &

See Session setup.

How it works

otter-wallpaper writes the current image path per output to wallpaper-state.
otter-theme-gen reads that file, extracts a palette, and updates ~/.config/otter-shell/generated-colors.conf.
Apps watching the theme import graph pick up the new colors. otter-term hot-reloads shared theme changes without a restart.

The daemon skips work when the wallpaper hash has not changed.

Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/otter-shell/otter-theme-gen.conf Generated color layer: ~/.config/otter-shell/generated-colors.conf

enabled = true
mode = dark
islands_mode = false
strategy = material_you
contrast = 0.7
vibrancy = 0.6
global_opacity = 96

Key	Default	Description
`enabled`	`true`	Turn wallpaper-reactive theming on or off
`mode`	`dark`	`dark` or `light` palette
`islands_mode`	`false`	Make the Bar rail transparent and give each section its own generated surface
`strategy`	`material_you`	Palette extraction style
`contrast`	`0.7`	Palette contrast (0.0 to 1.0)
`vibrancy`	`0.6`	Palette vibrancy (0.0 to 1.0)
`global_opacity`	`96`	Panel and surface opacity (0 to 100)

strategy options: material_you, analogous, vibrant, monochromatic, direct, temperature. With islands_mode = true, gaps between Bar sections stay clear. When blur is enabled, each section clips blur to its own surface.

Template outputs

Optional template keys rewrite third-party config files when colors change. All templates start disabled. Enable only the apps you want synced.

template_gtk3_enabled = true
template_hyprland_enabled = true
template_kcolorscheme_enabled = true
template_papirus_colors_enabled = true

Shipped templates cover terminals, GTK, Hyprland (~/.config/hypr/otter-theme.lua), bottom, btop, KDE color schemes, Papirus folder colors, and more. Toggle them in the Theme Gen tab in otter-settings.

KDE color schemes

Enable template_kcolorscheme_enabled to write ~/.local/share/color-schemes/Otter.colors and sync related keys through kdeglobals. When KDE CLI tools are installed, the daemon can refresh the live session too.

Papirus folder colors

Enable template_papirus_colors_enabled to create and select a user-owned Otter-Papirus-* icon theme for GTK and Qt. It inherits installed Papirus icons and points folder names at the closest Papirus color variant. No root and no writes under /usr/share. Papirus must already be installed.

otter-theme-gen never rewrites root theme.conf. It reads the selected profile and root overrides, then writes color keys only to generated-colors.conf.

Templates on disk

Installed templates live under /usr/share/otter-shell/theme-gen/templates/.

Get Started

Desktop Shell

Core Apps

Productivity

Utilities

Gaming

Configuration

Usage

How it works

Configuration

Template outputs

KDE color schemes

Papirus folder colors

Templates on disk

​Usage

​How it works

​Configuration

​Template outputs

​KDE color schemes

​Papirus folder colors

​Templates on disk

Usage

How it works

Configuration

Template outputs

KDE color schemes

Papirus folder colors

Templates on disk