Papirus icon set gets first update in over a year with 80+ new icons

Fans of the the Papirus icon theme will be pleased to hear there a new update – the first since May 2025.

Papirus’s first update in 2026 (the tardiness of which its maintainer, Serhii Yeremenko, apologises) brings over 80 new or updated icons spanning apps, games and user-interface icons, plus new file mimetypes and revised symlinks.

Frequent updates are why Papirus icons are popular with Linux users, and have been for such a long time. Often, Linux icon packs debut with a big bang, the momentum fuels a few revisions but then things go quiet as people and maintainers move on.

Papirus has been going since 2013 and has been updated periodically ever since.

Maintaining an icon theme takes a lot of effort. New apps are released all the time, there are packaging format quirks to account for, apps change their branding or undergo UI revamps that expect newer symbolic icons to be available.

One gap in coverage often spoils the overall look.

Among the new icons added (or receiving symlink changes) in the Papirus 202608 update:

Gaming coverage expands. There are new icons for AssaultCube Reloaded, Black Desert, Cities Skylines 2, Team Fortress 2 Classified, Overwatch and Hollow Knight: Silksong (among others).

Mimetype and file icon coverage also loops in more ROM files, including those used by Nintendo DS emulators.

Other icon changes benefit users on Cinnamon, LxQt and XFCE desktops, with the latter gaining updated symlinks to provide relevant icons for the WhiskerMenu, Notes, SysTray and XKB panel applets.

Papirus 202608 include redesigned icons for IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate and Community edition, PyCharm and its Community edition and the open-source reference manager Zotero, among others. Kotlin and project ReadMe files also receive revised mimetypes.

The entire C family mimetype (file) icons have been updated in Papirus v202608. They now use the the same text style, consistent with page colours derived from the official logos and use different colours for ‘Objective’ C versions.

How to install Papirus icons

Download the latest Papirus icons release from GitHub, then manually move the extracted folder to the relevant location (~/.local/icons, off the top of my head).

If you’re on Ubuntu, Linux Mint or similar, you may find it easier to install Papirus using the Papirus icons PPA. The PPA packages the latest release for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS thru 26.04 LTS.

To add the PPA, open your terminal and run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:papirus/papirus

sudo apt install papirus-icon-theme

Once installed, you can the change icon theme to Papirus. On GNOME Shell, install the GNOME Tweaks app to do it (sudo apt install gnome-tweaks), while other desktop environments usually provide a built in method for changing icon theme.

Worth noting: apps which are sandboxed, i.e., snaps or flatpaks, don’t always “inherit” the system-level icon theme.