xsettingsd

xsettingsd is a daemon that implements the XSETTINGS specification.

It is intended to be small, fast, and minimally dependent on other libraries. It can serve as an alternative to gnome-settings-daemon for users who are not using the GNOME desktop environment but who still run GTK+ applications and want to configure things such as themes, font antialiasing/hinting, and UI sound effects.

Installation

Requirements:

• C++ compiler
• CMake or SCons
• X11 headers (libx11-dev in Debian)
• GoogleTest (optional, libgtest-dev in Debian)

To compile and install using CMake:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/path ..
make
make install

To run tests:

make test

To delete all installed files:

make uninstall

Alternatively, you can compile xsettingsd and dump_xsettings using SCons:

sudo apt-get install scons g++ libstdc++-dev libx11-dev
scons xsettingsd dump_xsettings

Configuration

You may wish to dump your existing settings to use as a starting point. To do this, check that gnome-settings-daemon (or another program that implements XSETTINGS) is running and run the dump_xsettings program. Your current settings should be printed to stdout in xsettingsd's configuration format. To use this as your initial configuration, redirect the output of the program:

dump_xsettings >~/.xsettingsd

At startup, xsettingsd checks the following locations for a configuration file, using the first readable file that it finds:

• ~/.xsettingsd
• ~/.config/xsettingsd/xsettingsd.conf (base directory overridable via $XDG_CONFIG_HOME)
• /etc/xsettingsd/xsettingsd.conf (base directories overridable via $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS)

An alternate configuration file location may be specified using the -c or --config command-line flags.

If xsettingsd encounters any errors while reading the configuration, it exits; otherwise it becomes the XSETTINGS manager on all screens (configurable via the -s or --screen command-line flags).

After modifying the configuration file, you can trigger a configuration reload by sending a HUP signal to xsettingsd, e.g.

killall -HUP xsettingsd

If there in a problem with the new configuration, xsettingsd will continue using the previous version.

The format for the configuration file is simple. Setting names and their corresponding values are whitespace-separated, with at most one setting per line.

• Integer values appear as bare decimal numbers.
• String values are double-quoted.
• Color values are (R, G, B, A) or (R, G, B) tuples, where each value ranges between 0 and 65535 (omitting the alpha value results in full opacity).
• Full-line comments can be started with a # character.

Here is an example .xsettingsd file:

# Configure our fonts.
Xft/Antialias 1
Xft/HintStyle "hintfull"
Xft/Hinting 1
Xft/RGBA "none"
Xft/lcdfilter "none"
# Create a color setting (haven't seen these used anywhere, though).
MyFavoriteColor (33667, 48059, 38036, 32768) # not really my favorite!
EscapedQuote "here's how to put a \" in a string!"

Running

If you are using a ~/.xsession file to control which programs are executed when you start an X session, you can add the following near the top of it:

/path/to/xsettingsd &

Settings

The following table lists some of things that can be configured in GTK+ applications using XSETTINGS. The Details column lists the corresponding properties in the GtkSettings class.

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/XSettingsRegistry/ also lists standardized settings.

Note that GTK+ applications may not honor configured settings in some situations. For example, apps using libadwaita apparently don't use gtk-theme-name (issue #36, heated discussion).

GTK+ support for XSETTINGS also seems to be limited when running under Wayland rather than X11.

Other Notes

Some applications (e.g. Firefox 3) don't seem to use XSETTINGS to control text rendering. You can try additionally putting something like the following in ~/.fonts.conf:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <match target="font" >
 <edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
 <const>none</const>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
 <edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
 <bool>true</bool>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
 <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
 <const>hintfull</const>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font" >
 <edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
 <bool>true</bool>
 </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

and in ~/.Xresources or ~/.Xdefaults:

Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.hinting: 1
Xft.rgba: none
Xft.hintstyle: hintfull

(Tweak the values to your own preferences, of course.)