The Adwaita icon theme is the default icon theme of the GNOME desktop and …Well, it is what it is.
Adwaita is not generally considered to be the best icon theme for Linux but it’s perfectly palatable and coherent.
But is a dramatic modern makeover on the way?
Adwaita & The Locust
A set of new icons were recently added to the Adwaita icon theme repo on Gitlab, where a fair bit of GNOME development now takes place.
The new icons were uploaded by GNOME’s chief designer Jakub Steiner to a WIP branch of the Adwaita repo called “locust” (though the branch itself isn’t new).
His commit replaces the dull brown folders of the current set with a set of brighter, lighter and bluer icons for the standard core directories used on the GNOME desktop, like ‘Bookmarks’, ‘Pictures’ and ‘Music’.
The new icons also appear flatter, less textured (there’s no inset shadow) and — don’t hate me — far more befitting of the modern GNOME desktop experience than those of the vanilla Adwaita icon set:
A Work In Progress
Now, to be clear: I’m not suggesting or claiming that these redesigned icons will replace the stock Adwaita folder icons we’re all familiar with. They could just be the result of creative ideas exploring how Adwaita folder icons could look like. A proposal. A work in progress. Any and all of the above.
Plus, as eagle-eyed GNOME watcher Alex “WOGUE” notes on his Twitter page, it’s possible that the newer, bluer icons are intended for the Purism Librem 5 smartphone, which runs a mobile version of the GNOME Shell UI.
In the video below (warning: music) you can see how the icons match up with the current Adwaita theme in both its light and dark variants. To my eyes the new icons are “lost” against the regular theme and work better against a dark background.
Whatever they’re for, and whatever happens to them, I hope we get to see more of them!
I’d love to know what those of who roll with the stock Adwaita GTK theme and icon set on Ubuntu (and other distros) think of these icons — share your thoughts in the comments space below!
H/T Alex