Gnome Terminal Titlebar Always Black

In GNOME, my Terminal's titlebar is always black, even when I use a light shell theme. Everything in GNOME has a white titlebar except for Terminal. I also tried using another theme, and it does this for every theme I try. I'm guessing it's because the GNOME developers expect that the terminal background is going to be black, so they make the titlebar black.

Terminal Titlebar:

Other Titlebar:

See how the terminal's titlebar is always black?

Is there a way to make the titlebar the same as the rest of the system theme, like with dconf-editor or something?

Ubuntu 20.04

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3 Answers

After a while of searching, I found out that you can do this with dconf-editor. Go to /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/theme-variant and change the value to either 'system' or 'light' (default = 'dark'). Now you get a white terminal titlebar.

For those who are new, the easiest way is to go to Terminal > Preferences > Global > Theme Varient and change it to "default" which will change it to match with the rest of you applications theme.

While changing this via dconf-editor certainly is an option, it can be done easier: the setting is exposed in the user interface.

In Gnome Terminal, open the Preferences. On the tab "General" under "Global", change the "Theme variant" to "Light".

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Maya Lin-Takahashi

Maya Lin-Takahashi

Consumer Tech & Gadget Reviewer

Maya is a hardware enthusiast who tests and reviews smart home devices, smartphones, wearables, and audio gear. She focuses on practical consumer value and build quality.

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