2026 May 23Light or dark? GNOME sideI like both, depending on how much light is in the room. I much prefer to set my desktop light or dark manually than to automate with timers.On GNOME light or dark is color-scheme and you can set read and set it from the command line. You can read it from the command line (default light theme is called default)$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme | tr -d "'"defaultand you can set it from the command line (default dark theme is called prefer-dark)$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme prefer-darkwill change it to dark.(You can also set other preferred GNOME themes this way.)Light or dark? Emacs sideProtesilaos has published a gazillion pretty themes, but I prefer his modus-themes for their visual simplicity and also for their UI amenities. For example you can set one light theme (modus-operandi family) and one dark theme (modus-vivendi family) and toggle between them:(setopt modus-themes-to-toggle '(modus-operandi-tinted modus-vivendi-tinted))(bind-key "C-c m" #'modus-themes-toggle)And there is the custom-variable custom-enabled-themes, usually set in your custom-file, that determines what themes are initially enabled.(setopt custom-enabled-themes '(modus-operandi-tinted modus-vivendi-tinted))The order of this list determines which theme is activated by default: the first one.Matching Emacs to GNOMEBut when I start Emacs, I want the startup theme to match the GNOME theme! So I took custom-enabled-themes out of the custom file and added these lines to early-init.el:(defconst jeh/modus-themes-list (let* ((light 'modus-operandi-tinted) (dark 'modus-vivendi-tinted) (gnome-theme (car (split-string (shell-command-to-string "gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme | tr -d \"'\""))))) (cond ((string= gnome-theme "default") `(,light ,dark)) ((string= gnome-theme "prefer-dark") `(,dark ,light)))) "List of modus themes IN ORDER: first element is the default theme,which depends on whether the GNOME color-scheme is light or dark.")(setopt custom-enabled-themes jeh/modus-themes-list)(setopt modus-themes-to-toggle jeh/modus-themes-list)Toggling them togetherI wish I could remember from whom I stole this little bash script to toggle GNOME theme. Note the last line I added, which also toggles Emacs theme.#!/usr/bin/env bashclass=org.gnome.desktop.interface name=color-schemestatus=$(gsettings get "$class" "$name" | tr -d "'")if [[ $status = "default" || $status = "prefer-light" ]]; then new_status="prefer-dark"else new_status="default"figsettings set "$class" "$name" "$new_status"emacsclient -e '(modus-themes-toggle)'Save it to somewhere in your path (e.g. ~/bin/gnome-toggle-light-dark.sh) and chmod +x ~/bin/gnome-toggle-light-dark.sh. Test it from the command line.The best part is that GNOME lets you bind a keyboard shortcut to a script:Settings ⟶ Keyboard ⟶ View and Customize Shortcuts ⟶ Custom Shortcuts ⟶ + (add shortcut)Now you can toggle GNOME and Emacs themes together as the sky determines your mood.tags: emacs gnome