Zen Browser?

[UnclePsymon]

Hey there, I fell in love with the Firefox based Zen Browser: https://zen-browser.app/. Is there a way to get Stylix to theme Zen? Or maybe that would be something for the future? Thx!

[trueNAHO]

Is there a way to get Stylix to theme Zen?

I am unable to find the Zen browser in Nixpkgs or Home Manager.

Otherwise, supporting the Zen browser should be possible.

[trueNAHO]

I guess @UnclePsymon is talking about the community maintained flake: https://github.com/0xc000022070/zen-browser-flake

Thanks for pointing that out. In that case, supporting this external flake should be similar to the following instances:

• stylix/modules/neovim/nixvim.nix

  Lines 150 to 151 in f6c5aaa

  	(lib.mkIf (config.stylix.enable && cfg.enable && options.programs ? nixvim) (
  	lib.optionalAttrs (options.programs ? nixvim) {

• stylix/modules/neovim/nvf.nix

  Lines 25 to 27 in f6c5aaa

  	lib.mkIf (config.stylix.enable && cfg.enable && options.programs ? nvf)
  	(
  	lib.optionalAttrs (options.programs ? nvf) {

• stylix/modules/spicetify/spicetify.nix

  Line 14 in f6c5aaa

  lib.optionalAttrs (options.programs ? spicetify) {

[permafrozen]

I have an internship right now so I can't open a PR, until I've got some time.

[MrSom3body]

I'd be happy to pick it up today or tomorrow :)

[trueNAHO]

I'd be happy to pick it up today or tomorrow :)

This is greatly appreciated.

For reference, I have opened #1685 as a more manageable issue.

[permafrozen]

I wrote both for userChrome.css and userContent.css now usable nix files, that anybody can use if they want. They are meant to be used for the home-manager module of the zen-browser flake and can be plugged into the programs.zen-browser.profiles.<name>.userChrome and programs.zen-browser.profiles.<name>.userContent respectively.

userChrome.nix:
https://github.com/permafrozen/nivis/blob/56a3997d88e6e542f1a17924de906d1ca3757cff/module/zen-browser/userChrome.nix

userContent.nix:
https://github.com/permafrozen/nivis/blob/56a3997d88e6e542f1a17924de906d1ca3757cff/module/zen-browser/userContent.nix

Usage (line 128 & 129):
Ignore the module stuff
https://github.com/permafrozen/nivis/blob/56a3997d88e6e542f1a17924de906d1ca3757cff/module/zen-browser/default.nix

If anybody cares to create a proper stylix module feel free to use these as a base, would be nice to have an option to theme zen-browser in stylix directly.

The css is heavily inspired from: https://github.com/catppuccin/zen-browser so all credits to them

[MrSom3body]

Did you need to do anything manually to get Nix to really place the two files in the user's profile? As far as I can see, I did everything you did in #1694, but the userChrome.css and userContent.css don't get symlinked (they are created tho)

[permafrozen]

Hello, thank you for contributing, I only used the home-manager module. Make sure it's enabled too. Other than that there is nothing coming to mind.

[permafrozen]

If anybody has problems with the background of some websites not being displayed as white, because it isn't set and just shows the background of the browser, which sometimes makes text hard to read, you can use the following snipped to force the css onto the website. This might be worth as an option like stylix.targets.zen-browser.forceDefaultBackground or something like that.

You can also just use this snippet for now, but if you think this would be worth a pull request, once my internship is over I can try to make one:

Important

This will overwrite the already defined userContent value by stylix and can also cause issues on some websites, where they define the html, instead of the body with their background color, which results in a flash bang (not cool), if you have an idea how to prevent that, I would love to know.

  programs.zen-browser.profiles.<name>.userContent = lib.mkForce ''
    @-moz-document url-prefix(http) {
      body { background: white !important; }
    }
  '';

Before:

After:

Flashbang:

[MrSom3body]

Could you send an example site where it doesn't work for you? AliExpress seems to work for me:

[0xda157]

If anybody has problems with the background of some websites not being displayed as white, because it isn't set and just shows the background of the browser, which sometimes makes text hard to read, you can use the following snipped to force the css onto the website. This might be worth as an option like stylix.targets.zen-browser.forceDefaultBackground or something like that.

This issue doesn't have anything to do with stylix, you need to set browser.tabs.allow_transparent_browser to false in about:config.

[permafrozen]

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that 😭

[Steinardarri]

I didn't realize there already was a discussion for Zen Browser.
I suggested the change because I also wanted to add stuff to userChrome to get the transparency looking better 😁

[Suzu-lab]

Hey. Instead of opening a new thread for this, I decided to just add to this one.

I am having trouble configuring Stylix for Zen using the zen-browser module..

According to the documentation in https://nix-community.github.io/stylix/options/modules/zen-browser.html , I have to set it using the option stylix.targets.zen-browser inside home-manager
However, when doing the setup inside my home-manager config, I receive an error "home-manager.users..stylix.targets.zen-browser does not exist", even for just setting the option to enable it.

The configuration sits inside my home-manager. I tried doing a test and enabling the config for waybar alongside it to see if there was any scope or import problem, but the targets.waybar option is working fine, I get no errors with it, only with the zen-browser option.

I am using the community flake for Zen Browser, at https://github.com/0xc000022070/zen-browser-flake , and it is set in my home-manager config with programs.zen-browser.enable = true; (and it's working fine).
Stylix is also enabled directly in configuration.nix with stylix.enable = true; and it's already working to set the style of my terminal and some gtk programs, so Stylix by itself is working, I have no idea why it's not finding the zen-browser option in targets.

For what it's worth, though, I'm using NixOS stable, version 25.05, with Stylix following the same version, so this might as well be some undocumented "oh, this option is only available in the unstable channel"

[trueNAHO]

I am having trouble configuring Stylix for Zen using the zen-browser module..

According to the documentation in https://nix-community.github.io/stylix/options/modules/zen-browser.html , I have to set it using the option stylix.targets.zen-browser inside home-manager However, when doing the setup inside my home-manager config, I receive an error "home-manager.users..stylix.targets.zen-browser does not exist", even for just setting the option to enable it.

[...]

For what it's worth, though, I'm using NixOS stable, version 25.05, with Stylix following the same version, so this might as well be some undocumented "oh, this option is only available in the unstable channel"

Yes. That's exactly it. #1694 has not been backported yet. Currently, the documentation website only reflects the master branch, and there is no separate documentation for the stable branch.

[Suzu-lab]

I am having trouble configuring Stylix for Zen using the zen-browser module..
According to the documentation in https://nix-community.github.io/stylix/options/modules/zen-browser.html , I have to set it using the option stylix.targets.zen-browser inside home-manager However, when doing the setup inside my home-manager config, I receive an error "home-manager.users..stylix.targets.zen-browser does not exist", even for just setting the option to enable it.
[...]
For what it's worth, though, I'm using NixOS stable, version 25.05, with Stylix following the same version, so this might as well be some undocumented "oh, this option is only available in the unstable channel"

Yes. That's exactly it. #1694 has not been backported yet. Currently, the documentation website only reflects the master branch, and there is no separate documentation for the stable branch.

Ah, I see.
Yeah, I imagined something like that, thank you for confirming it.

I assume there is no feasible way to keep on the stable branch while forcing the system to fetch this module from the unstable branch, and the way to go would be just moving my system to unstable, right?

[trueNAHO]

#1694 has not been backported yet. [...]

[...]

I assume there is no feasible way to keep on the stable branch while forcing the system to fetch this module from the unstable branch

Although this is technically possible, it is IMHO not worth implementing. The best solution would be to simply backport #1694, if appropriate. Feel free to submit a PR.

and the way to go would be just moving my system to unstable, right?

Yes. The stable and unstable branches may arbitrarily diverge, making it not generally possible for them to cooperate. That is kind of the point of having separate branches.

[Suzu-lab]

heh, I just did the jump last night to the unstable branch and that's it. It just required changing two lines in my flakes config either way.

I figured it would be easier to just follow the master branch to avoid this kind of situation, and with the way NixOS works using unstable doesn't feel like a too great risk.

Thanks for the help.