How do I change my GTK theme?

If you're using a Unix-like operating system, use the tool provided by your distribution vendor to install and select the theme. Now, simply start FreeGuide and, if you haven't already done so, select the GTK+ look-and-feel and enjoy the new look. In general, themes are installed by extracting their files into the ${USER}/.themes directory. If you do not have a tool for working with GTK+ themes, GTK Theme Switch 2 is a nice lightweight program for installing and selecting themes. Note: If you do not want to install and/or select the theme, you may follow the Windows instructions below.

If you're using Windows (or you don't want to install the theme on your Unix-like operating system), it's not necessary to install the theme. Extract the theme files to a directory, keeping each theme in its own directory, and keep all the theme directories together in a single directory to make them easy to find (I recommend using C:\gtk since it's short and easy to type).

Since most of the themes will be distributed in "tarballs" (a common way to distribute software for Unix-like operating systems), you will need an extraction tool that can handle tape archive files (tar files) and GZIP and/or BZIP2 compression. One such tool for Windows is 7-Zip.

Once you've extracted the themes, you're ready to use them. To do so, just specify the location of the gtkrc file in the swing.gtkthemefile system property on the command line, as shown below:

java -Dswing.gtkthemefile="C:\gtk\Theme Name\gtk-2.0\gtkrc" ...

Where "..." means fill in the rest of the shortcut command that was already present.