With Ubuntu 25.04 feature freeze now in effect, the final bits of polish have begun to arrive in Plucky Puffin daily builds, including an all-important update to the distro’s default theme.
Ubuntu’s Yaru theme is composed of a modified GTK4/libadwaita stylesheet, GNOME Shell theme, icon pack, and a set of system sound effects.
With GNOME 48 bringing numerous visual tweaks and new features to account for, the Yaru designers have updated the theme to account for them.
The majority of these changes are subtle, but one isn’t.
Remember the oversized Yaru icon ‘bug’ I reported on last month?
I’m pleased to say tweaks to address those (hard to spot, granted) sizing quirks have made it in — hurrah!
Thus, in Ubuntu 25.04 you may—if you’re eagle-eyed— notice more of the distro’s square-ish app icon shapes sit “optically proportionate” amongst the other shapes the Yaru icon set uses.
The new Sysprof icon also adapts to the system accent colour, with the chosen hue mirrored in the elapsed time portion of the icon – a small but brilliant bit of detailing! Inside the app itself are a suite of new Yaru-style symbolic icons.
Other apps to benefit from updated Yaru-style symbolic icons within their UI include Snapshot (the camera app included in expanded installs) and Text Editor. The former of these also gets a redesigned app icon too.
Anyone adding GNOME Software or Ear Tag to their installs will find redesigned icons on show:
Ubuntu’s design team opt to tack closer to the way upstream GNOME implements accent colours in the backend. For users, few changes (beyond increased contrast) show as Ubuntu continues to offer its own colour choice overrides, e.g., Ubuntu orange (default) and ‘warty’ brown.
Talking of, when picking the ‘warty’ brown accent colour in Ubuntu 25.04 the shell theme no longer changes to light. That ‘pairing’ was a nostalgic nod added in 24.10 to mark Ubuntu 20th anniversary.
Similarly, the warty login sound has been turned off by default (a toggle to re-enable it remains present, for those who want it).
Other changes to the Yaru theme in Ubuntu 25.04 include:
- Mimetype icon for Typst source files
- Yaru style app and symbolic icons added for EarTag
- Redesigned GNOME Software icon
- Adds power saving tab icon to Settings > Power
- Fixes for some missing characters on onscreen keyboard keys
- Yaru spinner icon dropped (now handled in CSS)
- Missing Nautilus emblems restored
- Zipper-style Mimetype tweaks
- Restyled library icon in Epiphany (aka GNOME Web)
- Radius and hover colour tweaks for GNOME Shell notifications
Plus lots of smaller fixes, tune-ups, and tweaks to ensure GNOME 48 and Ubuntu both marry together beautifully, the former providing a slick set of new features and the latter giving them that Ubuntu personality users come to expect.
Ubuntu 25.04 daily build testers should get these, and other updates, over the next few days – so keep an eye out!