Feedback needed for a theme PR

I currently need feedback as to how to implement a theming improvement to wine. My recommendation is that all prefixes use $HOME/.config/wine.msstyle/.theme if possible. I was told this is the place to ask for feedback.

Please see https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/10920

[Patrick Hibbs]

Having read the linked <a 
href="https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59739">bug #59739</a>, the 
initial issue seems to be that wine isn't looking for themes outside of 
it's own prefix, and thus increasing the amount of space each prefix 
uses due to needing to copy the *same* custom theme data into each newly 
made prefix. This part is something I'd support fixing, as the prefixes 
are already too large to begin with.


However, the issue seems to slowly suffer from scope creep and become a 
complaint that custom theming is not automatic across all prefixes. This 
is something that really should be left alone for a number of reasons. 
The most obvious being that there is an entire class of UI bugs that 
break apps as a direct result of the Windows theme being used and 
various wine-inaccuracies when handing Windows themes.

Another reason against automatic custom theming for all prefixes, is 
that this is something that most 3rd party wrappers / launchers should 
be able to handle on their own. My own manager could do this with one 
additional line of code. (A few more if I want to be nice and allow 
proper checks.) For users that don't configure Wine themselves, (Steam / 
Proton users, PlayOnLinux, etc.), they aren't configuring this stuff 
directly anyway. Sure, the 3rd party wrappers may like a simple command 
line arg / environment variable to change it during prefix creation, and 
Wine could look into providing a standard way to indicate a choice, 
(which could be useful for other things like disabling winemenubuilder, 
enabling the start menu in Virtual Desktop mode, etc.), but we'd still 
need to have some sort of "safe-mode" that disables it for debugging / 
bug-reporting / testing / app workaround / etc. purposes.

As for vanilla wine users, they'd be better served by having wine's 
control panel made more visible, better organized, and more feature 
complete. Maybe have a button that lets them import various 
"personalized" settings from another prefix? Currently the only easy way 
to duplicate a prefix config out side of a manager app, is to manually 
copy an existing prefix warts and all, then strip out what isn't 
desired. It would be better if Wine had some global settings that could 
be handled by KDE's System Settings / GNOME's Control Center apps, along 
with a clear "safe-mode" button that would disable it and that the wiki 
could refer users to when submitting bug reports / troubleshooting Wine.


On 5/15/26 8:08 PM, Fatih Bakal via Wine-Devel wrote:
> I currently need feedback as to how to implement a theming improvement to wine. My recommendation is that all prefixes use $HOME/.config/wine.msstyle/.theme if possible. I was told this is the place to ask for feedback.
>
> Please see https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/10920

What I have in mind is for it to behave exactly as is. But if user has put a theme file to $HOME/.config/ it would use that thus making it optional and not breaking anything.

[Ty]

I know some people get crazy when this topic comes up and start going into
feature creep, wanting support for different window decorations and having
adwaita or other, but just basic dark/light mode automation on the big DE's
would go a long way.

On Fri, May 15, 2026 at 11:05 PM Fatih Bakal via Wine-Devel <
[e-mail]> wrote:
> What I have in mind is for it to behave exactly as is. But if user has put
> a theme file to $HOME/.config/ it would use that thus making it optional
> and not breaking anything.

As mentioned in the linked issue, making something default (other than the dark theme setting thats just a boolean) won't probably happen because there is a chance actual theming would cause a bit of breakage across uis of different applications thus should be optional. Also that being said the boolean option alone doesn't make wine built in stuff (explorer control taskmgr..) not go dark theme