F44 Budgie upgrade causing theming issues

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1

Noticed after upgrading from F43 Budgie to F44 Bdugie , that some theming many apps has broken

I had dark mode enabled on F43, and after upgrading there are mismatches
F43 Budgie on left, F44 Budgie on right

2

That app looks more like nemo, not dolphin.

image
image3840×2160 947 KB

3

I got it wrong, you would be correct.
Fixed in edit

4

Is xdg-desktop-portals running.

ps aux | grep [x]dg-desktop

$ ps aux | grep [x]dg-desktop
leigh       3024  0.0  0.0 849976 19524 ?        Ssl  Apr25   0:06 /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal
leigh       3058  0.0  0.1 718124 28636 ?        Ssl  Apr25   0:01 /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-xapp
leigh       3086  0.0  0.1 1615128 48608 ?       Ssl  Apr25   0:07 /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
5

I think so? This is the output of that command above

kenryo      1715  0.0  0.3 849528 18936 ?        Sl   07:04   0:00 /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal
kenryo      1771  0.0  0.4 717276 27888 ?        Ssl  07:04   0:00 /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
kenryo      1831  0.0  0.1  83052  6840 ?        Ssl  07:04   0:00 /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr
6

It appears budgie wlroots based WM is ignoring the theme choice.

7

labwc (the compositor in use) doesn’t really support light/dark theming I think? @joshstrobl may know more…

8

I opened Fedora Budgie 44 in live mode, and Pocillo seems incomplete; I don’t remember seeing the Labwc themes or the Frappe and Darkest variations of Pocillo.

And the decision to add several Qt/KDE apps was terrible.

For example, when trying to open an image file in Dolphin, no app appeared as an option.

Snapshot_2026-04-30_00-26-07
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9

I reopened Fedora Budgie 44 in live mode, and there are indeed no labwc folders inside the Pocillo theme folders.

And I remembered to test something, Parole on Wayland. I don’t know if there was an update that fixed this, but in live mode it’s still the version that separates the video from the main window.

Snapshot_2026-04-30_00-49-58
Snapshot_2026-04-30_00-49-581600×900 742 KB

I noticed something else: Dolphin is using the Breeze icon theme, even though Fedora Budgie’s icon theme is set to Papirus.

However, if there are previewable files, such as image files, an icon from the Papirus icon theme is used.

Snapshot_2026-04-30_00-49-06
Snapshot_2026-04-30_00-49-061600×900 388 KB

Snapshot_2026-04-30_00-51-15
Snapshot_2026-04-30_00-51-151600×900 361 KB

10

I’ve found that you can change the titlebar theme
Open Budgie Desktop Settings > Appearance > Style > Labwc Compositor Theme > Change the dropdown to Dark

11

yeah this is the best way to change title bar as its now being controlled by labwc. Do note that budgie 10.10 is kinda a transition period to lay the foundations for budgie 11.

  • Wayland only now
  • Switching to QT, but for now GTK themeing is still present
  • Some apps changed because of wayland compatibly
12

There’s also a slight bug for the SDDM service that runs from this upgrade as well.

systemctl status sddm

May 10 11:23:15 hp-envy-x360 systemd[1]: Started sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager.
May 10 11:23:15 hp-envy-x360 sddm[1469]: The configured theme "01-breeze-fedora" doesn't exist, using the embedded theme instead

This will be a minor annoyance for Budgie atomic users who upgrade from 43 to 44. Once they reboot, their login screen will fall back to the default SDDM theme.

Something that can be fixed in a future release? Possibly the SDDM config should default to a theme that exists on Budgie DE, or ship with a lightweight theme.