A fusion of best icon themes that adhere to Adwaita's design philosophy to extend GNOME's Shell's original icon set.

The purpose of this project is to combine/compile the best of all icons from different icon themes into a single one while still maintaining Adwaita and GNOME's HIG and design philosophy. Thereby providing third-party apps with a consistent look and feel; extending Adwaita's limited icon sets; replacing/providing an alternative and more modern/better icon than previously existing one; and ultimately completing/filling the deficiency of GNOME's icons while upholding its design philosophy.

Currently, the icon theme does not have any package. Hence, it requires to be installed manually via git:

git clone https://github.com/NeoWaita/NeoWaita
# for bleeding edge/nightly installation
# git clone --single-branch --branch v47 https://github.com/NeoWaita/NeoWaita
cd NeoWaita
sudo ./install.sh # for system-wide installation
# or ./install.sh for local installation

An AUR package (git) submitted and maintained by @That1Calculator can be installed with any of your preferred AUR helper or by manually compiling the package build:

yay -S neowaita-git
# although it can also be done manually with
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/neowaita-git.git
cd neowaita-git
makepkg -si
sudo pacman -S neowaita-git

To apply the icon theme, you can use GNOME Tweaks or use gsettings:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme 'NeoWaita'

If you are using the git version, you can sync with the latest, currently v47 NeoWaita:47, using:

cd /usr/share/icons/NeoWaita
# or $HOME/.local/share/icons/NeoWaita
sudo git fetch
# only git fetch for local installation

sudo rm -rf /usr/share/icons/NeoWaita # for system wide
# rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/icons/NeoWaita

1. Open Files (Nautilus).
2. Find the folder you wish to change the icon.
3. Right click on the folder.
4. Click on Properties.
5. Click on the folder image.
6. Navigate to the NeoWaita installation folder and into the places subfolder (/places/scalable/).
7. Select the icon you wish to use.
8. Click Open.

If the theme doesn't apply try the following command:

# local installation
gtk-update-icon-cache -f -t /usr/share/icons/NeoWaita && xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate
# for system wide
# sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f -t /usr/share/icons/NeoWaita && xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate

If the theme applies, but a particular app doesn't get themed (and its icon is in NeoWaita), check its respective .desktop file. Some apps have icon paths hardcoded into their .desktop file or have a different icon name set there or no icon set at all. This can differ between distros. If you happen to have such apps, you'll need to copy their .desktop files into ~/.local/share/applications and modify them there providing the correct icon name.

If your app's .desktop file references an icon name not present in NeoWaita's apps/scalable folder, please report it in an issue providing the icon name from your system.

This project will not exists without the work of @somepaulo. This project is based upon MoreWaita which provides its foundation.

This theme is built mostly upon the work of Gnome's Adwaita designers and Gnome Circle apps' developers, as well as Papirus theme designers, with a touch of tinkering from @somepaulo, @dusansimic, @julianfairfax and others here and there. The theme provides icons for the most popular apps people really do install and use, and also covers the most frequently installed dependency GUI apps that almost nobody uses (like Avahi browsers, QT Designer, Software token, etc.).

The goal of NeoWaita is to add to Adwaita, not modify it, and to do roughly what Breeze does for KDE. This theme does not override any Adwaita icons, nor any Gnome Circle apps icons, nor icons that generally fit into the Adwaita paradigm (like Transmission GTK). Currently, this theme is way less all-inclusive than many others, but the aim is to be on par with Papirus some day. However, this is (mostly) a one-man hobby effort, albeit with some greatly appreciated help, so suggestions, requests, PRs and contributions are very welcome. In the meantime, I'll focus on adding icons that the community is requesting.

For most icons, especially branded ones, the general idea is to stay as close as possible to the original icons – to the point of using them in full – and giving them the distinct Adwaita 'perspective' and general flatness. One thing this theme deviates from is the Gnome colour palette in brand icons – NeoWaita keeps the brand colours.

This theme is built and tested against vanilla Gnome on Arch Linux. If an icon is in the theme, but is not applying to your app, please open an issue and mention the icon name referenced in your app's .desktop file.

Please consider donating to the original authors of the project, @somepaulo:

• ko-fi
• PayPal

These screenshots show icons currently in git, versioned releases may be behind