Better document (with examples?) on how to change the focused window border color (and top bar indicator color)

[madx]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I've been trying to find a way/inspect the source code to see where the color of the border drawn around focused window is defined, but wasn't able to find it.

I also tried to see where the top bar indicator color was defined, to no avail either.

I've tried Forge a few weeks ago and it had a configuration setting for this border color.

Describe the solution you'd like I'd like to be able to pick a color and have it apply to both the top bar indicator and the focus border. Could be a nice thing to be able to choose them independently too.

[Lythenas]

You can overwrite this in ~/.config/paperwm/user.css. See also https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM?tab=readme-ov-file#user-configuration--development But to be hones the section about configuring this is not that easy to understand. See also here for the default styles: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM/blob/release/config/user.css

.paperwm-selection is the window border. By default it uses the primary color from gnome (which also used to be configurable in gnome btw., but not anymore). E.g. I use:

.paperwm-selection {
    background-color: rgba(243,125,0, 0.5);
    border: 1px solid rgb(243,125,0);
}

which makes it orange.

I forget which class exactly was the color for the top bar. And I can't find it in the code... @jtaala can you help?

[Lythenas]

I think we should explain a bit better in the readme how to change the styles. Unless I missed it somewhere.

[jtaala]

Sure - yes, there is a way to change both.

See here for changing color/style of focused windows:

https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM/issues/683#issuecomment-1806648963

[jtaala]

We just change the opacity for the topbar (required for the workspace indicator bar to function):

https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM/issues/681#issuecomment-1806663794

You can see more about this here (including how to disable):

https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM#gnome-topbar-opacity--styling

[jtaala]

Oh, yes the indicator bar colour can also be styled as outlined in the README.md

https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM#window-position-bar-colored-bar-segment-in-top-bar

You can style both the coloured position bar and the dimmed "position bar backdrop" by overriding the paperwm-window-position-bar and paperwm-window-position-bar-backdrop CSS classes respectively (see user.css in User configuration & development section for more information). The paperwm-window-position-bar will also inherit the selection color (same as window borders) from tile-preview.

For example, here's mine from my ~/.config/paperwm/user.css:

.paperwm-selection {
    border: 7px rgba(215, 66, 98, 0.8);
    background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);
}

.paperwm-window-position-bar {
    background-color: rgba(66, 215, 215, 0.35);
}

The paperwm-selection is for selected window border, and the paperwm-window-position-bar styles the coloured segment of the window position indicator bar.

[jtaala]

Anyone whose good with words want to take this one and improve the doco here?

[madx]

Thanks all for your replies, I indeed missed that part of the README, my bad 😬