Feature request: Automatic icon theme recoloring from current wallpaper (fedora)

[p-retrover]

I would like to request a feature in Gowall that allows automatic recoloring of desktop icon themes to match the currently active wallpaper. Currently, Gowall can extract a color palette from a wallpaper and convert individual images or folders of images using a theme JSON or manual --replace commands. However, there are several limitations that make it difficult to achieve this workflow effectively:

Current Workflow Tried:

1. Extracted the palette from a wallpaper using:

   gowall extract /home/user/Pictures/wallpaper.jpg

   • This outputs the dominant colors to the terminal, but does not generate a JSON theme automatically.

2. Copied Adwaita icons to a local folder:

   cp -r /usr/share/icons/Adwaita ~/.local/share/icons/Adwaita-WallMatch

3. Attempted to recolor the folder with:

   gowall convert --dir ~/.local/share/icons/Adwaita-WallMatch --output ~/.local/share/icons/Adwaita-WallMatch

   • This ran, printed progress for each icon, but the resulting icons did not reflect the wallpaper colors.

4. Attempted to use --replace to map colors manually:

   gowall convert --dir ~/.local/share/icons/Adwaita-WallMatch \
       --replace "#000000,#2E1819" \
       --replace "#FFFFFF,#9A100E" \
       --output ~/.local/share/icons/Adwaita-WallMatch

   • This failed due to syntax issues (invalid hex color format or parsing error).
   • Even with lowercase and thresholds, the workflow was cumbersome and error-prone.

Pain Points:

• extract only prints colors and does not generate a usable theme JSON automatically.
• convert cannot automatically recolor an entire icon theme from a wallpaper without a theme JSON or multiple manual --replace commands.
• Handling thresholds and exact color replacements is error-prone.
• Users cannot automatically sync newly installed apps’ icons with the wallpaper theme.

Proposed Feature:

• Automatically generate a JSON theme from a wallpaper palette.
• Recolor an entire icon theme (e.g., Adwaita) to match the wallpaper with a single command.
• Optionally, integrate with GNOME to recolor icons whenever the wallpaper changes.

Benefits:

• Simplifies desktop theming and improves aesthetic consistency.
• Reduces manual work for users.
• Makes Gowall a more complete “wallpaper → theme” solution.

[Achno]

Hello @p-retrover ,

Lets take a look at the proposed features

Automatically generate a JSON theme from a wallpaper palette.

Honestly, i don't know i didn't think of that good job bringing it to my attention. I will add a --json flag for that.

gowall extract /home/user/Pictures/wallpaper.jpg --json

convert cannot automatically recolor an entire icon theme from a wallpaper without a theme JSON or multiple manual --replace commands.
Handling thresholds and exact color replacements is error-prone.

--replace is meant to be used for surgical tasks. like replacing the color of the petals in this example as you probably saw, it requires the user to adjust the threshold constantly till he perfects his image. There isn't really a great default value to set it. It's not meant to be for automation.

The threshold exists because different tools can return different colors. For example Firefox eyedropper gives you X, kcolorchooser gives you X', gowall gives you X'' , they look like the exact same color to the human eye but they are a tiny bit different, the threshold attemps to solve this.

This ran, printed progress for each icon, but the resulting icons did not reflect the wallpaper colors.

I'm assuming you are facing something like this scenario :

You have your blue Adwaita blue folder and your theme and you would expect the output to have 'yellow' which is the accent color of the theme but it only ends up using the dark/gray colors of the theme and then you try to correct it with --replace right?

This is pretty difficult to solve right now. The only easy thing you can do is create variations, look at the firefox icon in the first conversion it had some yellow at spots i didn't like so i switched color backends with

ColorCorrectionBackend : nn # Returns to the worse old color backend

and it created the 2nd firefox icon which says 'with tweaks` which looks much better. If it doesn't have the color from the first conversion, you are really just forced in handcrafting it.

A hacky solution

1. Here is what you can do, use gowall invert to completely change the colors of the icons and then convert to your theme.
2. just gowall convert to another random theme and then convert those icons to your theme.
   The results will be different and maybe you will reach your solution. i will give you a visualization
3. Experiment with ColorCorrectionBackend : nn . I will add a flag to change backends in the future right now ColorCorrectionBackend just sets the default backend you want to use and can be a pain with automations.

TLDR: There is not a good way to automate this, you can mitigate this with the creation of a lot of variations to get what you want following 1) and 2) That can be automated once a pipeline is to your liking and produces good results.

Optionally, integrate with GNOME to recolor icons whenever the wallpaper changes.

Can't really do that, if i do it for Gnome, then i got to do it for KDE and then hyprland and then X and then Y. This can be automated with software that just watch folders for changes and then just apply a hook, eg. have a gowall pipeline to turn the icons i think.

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Conclusion

1. Automatically generate a JSON theme from a wallpaper palette, ✔ Approved
2. For the icons that don't reflect the wallaper colors instead of messing with --replace which isn't sufficient here you can apply the 1) and 2) methods i mentioned above to generate variations in seconds.
3. Optionally, integrate with GNOME to recolor icons whenever the wallpaper changes. 🗙 Rejected

[p-retrover]

thank you for your response, I'll check your solution and post any follow ups.