Themes selector is overwhelming

[craig872]

The number of options within the themes selector dialog is quite overwhelming.
If you add a new theme its difficult to even find it here after its been installed.

Out of the box when clicking applications, icons, desktop you are given 30? 40? choices for each one.
I think it would help to add some other choices here like "theme" or "color scheme".
Based on what was selected there, the number of options for apps, icon, desktop could be reduced.
Example
If one chooses MINT-Y show only the colors for that theme.
If one chooses BLUE show only the BLUE variations from each available theme.

Was searching and also found this old post on the forums site, but could not find here on GH.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=348973

[Secret-chest]

This can't be done; why not just use the simplified selector?

[craig872]

Where is this "simplified" selector you speak of? The selector I see shows over 48 choices on a 27 inch display before I need to scroll down and see MORE of them?

[mtwebster]

What version of Cinnamon are you using?

For new installs, a simple theme selection is offered:

Theme designers/maintainers are also free to make their own matrix files for the simplified view.

[billyswong]

Let's take the Theme customization dialog in MATE as example

The list may be long, but there is a scrollbar for one to browse the choices fast. The Theme dialog in Cinnamon becomes difficult to use in advanced mode because the list is hard to navigate after it fills up the screen, thus the frustration from OP. For a lengthy dropdown, the presence/absence of a proper scrollbar is huge.

[craig872]

DE: Cinnamon 6.2.9
As stated in original message, albeit without the screen shot...
What I am suggesting to add another level of choices to the advanced screen (mouse, apps, icon, desktop)
Lets call it "FILTER" for now...
In the FILTER level of choices, present something like "MintY, MintL, MintX, Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, Purple, Orange, Grey"
This menu would need to be dynamically derived from all installed themes so that if there were 12 blue themes the term BLUE would only appear once.
Then based on THAT choice the OTHER choices can be reduced and not be so overwhelming.

[100savage]

Select the Simplifies Settings button

[Jopp-gh]

I agree with the OP and find this discussion quite amusing.

The solution is to open Mintinstall (the app you use to install apps) enter search keywords like "theme" and uninstall superfluous themes.

How the advanced theme menu looks, is yet another topic. Usually a bit of cleaning up is enough.

[ChooChooAl]

This doesn't help much during the initial picking of themes, but I discovered the other day when I made a bug report about themes not sorting properly that any personal themes, those in ~/.themes folder, are sorted at the top.

So once you have found a few, if you link or copy them to your ~/.themes folder and rename them, if nothing more the Mint-Y-Blue2, they will sort at the top of the list now. This way if you bounce around between a few favorites for variety, you can find them quickly.

ln -s /usr/share/themes/Mint-Y-Blue /home/name/.themes/Mint-Y-Blue2

[Hilyxx]

something like that?

[LinuxGuy-cyber]

I'd suggest just adding a Search bar in every selector (Pointer/Apps/Icons/Desktop). I agree, if you have a lot of themes installed, it gets crowded easily. But again, it's only a one-time thing, so I don't care much about it.

[ChooChooAl]

Regarding a 'color' filter: I don't know how it would work. I make my own themes and icons and pointers. So for desktop or applications, how would I define my themes as blue or red unless it's in the name, or a new field is added to the index.theme file.

As for the overwhelming lists, like a lot of other dialogs, the box could be wider, or allowed to stretch wider. I know the screen size can be known to a program, so why not make the initial list of desktop themes 75% of the screen width. Or as asked above, why not a scroll bar on the side. They make for an easy way to drag up/down and view the list quicker.

[nomad3wolf]

Generally i defend that more choice is better.
However, in this case i do agree that it's too much.
Mostly because they all are too similar.
Either divide it by subcategory or flat out remove a few old options.

[ChooChooAl]

I just deleted the Mint-L themes and the whole thing fits on one screen now when trying to select either Desktop or Applications.