Gradience

Gradience is a pretty cool tool that helps you customize Libadwaita apps and the Adwaita theme. Now, if you're not familiar with Libadwaita, let me fill you in! It's a library that GNOME introduced back in March 2020 to tackle some issues with GTK, which is the library GNOME uses to build its desktop environment. Some folks love it while others are not so fond of it.

What’s the Deal with Libadwaita?

The big idea behind Libadwaita was to speed things up for GNOME, especially with GTK4 needing some serious upgrades. It brought along adaptive widgets that work on all kinds of devices, a fresh UI design for buttons and widgets, in-app notifications, and made everything run smoother.

Theming Trouble

But here’s where the drama kicks in: Libadwaita can’t be themed easily. Since the Adwaita theme is baked right into it, any time developers want to tweak something about the theme, they have to recompile everything. This has frustrated quite a few people.

Enter Gradience!

This is where Gradience comes into play! It might not solve every issue with theming in Libadwaita, but it gives users way more options. Gradience is free and open-source and packed with tons of customization features for both Libadwaita apps and adw-gtk3 and -gtk4 themes.

Customization Galore!

With Gradience, you can change any color in the Adwaita theme. You can even pull Material 3 colors from your wallpapers! Plus, there are user presets available to make life easier. If you're feeling adventurous, you can dive into advanced settings using CSS—but be careful! Messing around could break some apps if you’re not sure what you're doing.

Plugins and More!

A standout feature of Gradience is its plugin support. You’re not stuck with just a few options; you can extend the app's functionality using plugins or even create your own tailored plugins!

The Bottom Line

So yeah, there’s still some chatter about Libadwaita and Adwaita because developers see things differently than end-users do. But Gradience doesn’t aim to change that viewpoint; instead, it gives users more control over how they configure their Libadwaita apps and themes.