Switchcraft

Switchcraft watches GNOME's light/dark preference and runs your shell commands when the theme changes.

Features

• Watches org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme and executes commands instantly.
• Polished libadwaita interface with light/dark pages, icons, and header-bar actions.
• Add, edit, enable/disable, or remove commands per theme.
• Define reusable constants for common variables in commands.
• Independent background monitoring - separate bash script runs even when GUI is closed.
• Keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+N to add, Ctrl+Q to quit) plus About and Shortcuts dialogs from the menu.

Command Examples (click to open)

• Change legacy theme to dark:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'adw-gtk3-dark'

• Change icon theme to light:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme 'MacTahoe-light'

• Set constants:

D2DL_SCHEMADIR="$HOME/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/schemas"
D2DL_SCHEMA="org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash2dock-lite"

• Change Dash 2 Dock Lite background based on theme and using constants

Light theme:

gsettings --schemadir $D2DL_SCHEMADIR set $D2DL_SCHEMA background-color '(0.063, 0.1216, 0.1882, 1.0)'

Dark theme:

gsettings --schemadir $D2DL_SCHEMADIR set $D2DL_SCHEMA background-color '(0.3373, 0.4392, 0.5294, 1.0)'

Requirements

• GNOME 40+ (GTK 4 and libadwaita)
• GLib 2.66+
• Vala compiler (for building)
• Meson build system
• jq (for JSON parsing in monitor script)
• ruby, rubygems, rpmbuild, appimagetool and chrpath (for packaging only)

Install dependencies (click to open)

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install meson valac libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev libjson-glib-dev jq ruby ruby-dev rubygems build-essential
gem install --user-install fpm

Fedora:

sudo dnf install meson vala gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel json-glib-devel jq ruby rubygems rpmbuild chrpath
gem install --user-install fpm

Arch:

sudo pacman -S meson vala gtk4 libadwaita json-glib jq ruby
gem install --user-install fpm

AppImageTool

Download from here and copy to $PATH

Installing

Download latest release rpm, deb or AppImage. For seemless AppImage installation Gear lever app is recommended.

Building

Details (click to open)

User-Level building and installation (Recommended)

# Configure for user installation
meson setup builddir --prefix="$HOME/.local"

# Compile
meson compile -C builddir

# Install to ~/.local
ninja -C builddir install

# Uninstall
ninja -C builddir remove

System-Wide Installation

# Configure for system installation
meson setup builddir --prefix=/usr/local

# Compile
meson compile -C builddir

# Install system-wide
sudo ninja -C builddir install

# Uninstall
sudo ninja -C builddir remove

Configuration

Details (click to open)

All runtime configuration lives under ~/.config/switchcraft/.

• commands.json - per-theme command lists. Example:

{
  "dark": [{ "command": "notify-send 'Dark mode enabled'", "enabled": true }],
  "light": [{ "command": "notify-send 'Light mode enabled'", "enabled": true }]
}

• constants.json - reusable variables referenced inside commands using $NAME or ${NAME}.

Example:

{
  "D2DL_SCHEMADIR": "$HOME/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/schemas",
  "D2DL_SCHEMA": "org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash2dock-lite"
}

• settings.json - app settings (e.g., monitoring_enabled). The UI saves changes automatically.

Monitor Files

When monitoring is enabled:

• ~/.local/bin/switchcraft-monitor.sh - The monitoring script (installed automatically)
• ~/.config/autostart/switchcraft-monitor.desktop - Autostart entry for login persistence

Known issues

• AppImages are standalone applications and does it have install/uninstall function. Because of this if you not disable monitoring before removing AppImage background script will continue running. You can temove it manually from ~/.config/autostart and ~/.local/bin.

License

This project is provided under the terms in LICENSE.