Colloid: an icon theme for Linux desktops that treats the folder as a colour picker

The installer renders a theme instead of shipping one

Colloid is a Linux desktop icon theme, and the interesting part is how it is delivered.

The README is short. It gives a preview image, a donation link, and then the install instructions, which are the whole of it. The command is `./install.sh` with options, and the option list is the primary documentation:

-d, --dest DIR          Specify destination directory (Default: $HOME/.local/share/icons)
-n, --name NAME         Specify theme name (Default: Colloid)
-s, --scheme VARIANTS   Specify folder colorscheme variant(s) [default|nord|dracula|gruvbox|everforest|catppuccin|all]
-t, --theme VARIANTS    Specify folder color variant(s) [default|purple|pink|red|orange|yellow|green|teal|grey|all] (Default: blue)
-a, --alternative       Install alternative icons for software center and file-manager
-p, --kde-plasma        Replaces Apple logo with KDE Plasma logo.
-b, --bold              Install bolder panel icons version (1.5px size)
-notint, --notint       Disable Follow ColorSheme for folders on KDE Plasma
-h, --help              Show help

Read that list closely and the design becomes clear. There are two dimensions of colour, a scheme and a theme, and they multiply. The scheme options are named after well known desktop colour palettes, and the theme options are the folder colours. The default scheme is default and the default folder colour is blue, but the scheme can be set to all, and the folder colour can be set to all as well, which means the script can generate every combination rather than one.

That is the design decision that makes this theme different from a static icon pack. A conventional theme ships one set of PNG files, and to get a purple folder you download a different download. Colloid keeps the folder artwork in a form the installer can recolour, so the choice happens at install time.

The project is written in Shell, licensed under GPL-3.0, and the repository is not archived, with the last push on 2026-08-29.

The variant directories are the theme's option matrix, stored as folders

The repository root lists the directories that the installer draws from, and they map one to one onto the command line options.

There is a dark/ directory, a release/ directory, an alternative/ directory, a bold/ directory, a notint/ directory, a plasma/ directory, a links/ directory, a cursors/ directory, a src/ directory and a templates/ directory. There is also a tui_installer.sh alongside install.sh, and preview images at the root, plus folders.png and schemes.png.

The correspondence is close enough to read as a design. alternative/ corresponds to the -a option for alternative icons for the software center and file manager, bold/ corresponds to -b and the bolder panel icons version at 1.5px size, notint/ corresponds to -notint and the disabled Follow ColorSheme behaviour for folders on KDE Plasma, plasma/ corresponds to -p and the KDE Plasma logo replacing the Apple logo, and release/ is presumably the assembled output that gets published.

The presence of both src/ and templates/ is the part that explains the rendering approach. A template directory holding the source artwork and a src directory holding the material to be processed is the shape of a generator rather than a static pack, and it is consistent with the installer being able to produce a nord scheme in teal on demand.

links/ and cursors/ are also worth noting. Cursors are a separate artefact from icons, so shipping a cursor set alongside means the theme covers the mouse pointer as well as the file and application icons, which is a completeness that many icon themes skip. The links/ directory suggests the same for symbolic links, which are a rendering problem of their own in the icon world.

For a reader who wants to modify the theme rather than install it, the source and template directories are where the work is, and the fact that the project is a shell script means the build step is the install step.

The KDE Plasma options are the ones that need a real desktop to understand

Two of the options exist because of a KDE Plasma behaviour, and they are worth explaining on their own since they are the least obvious part of the flag list.

The -p option, kde-plasma, replaces the Apple logo with the KDE Plasma logo. That is a licence and identity decision as much as a cosmetic one. An icon theme that includes the Apple logo is displaying Apple's trademark on a machine that has nothing to do with Apple, and a Linux desktop theme that offers to swap it out is a theme that has thought about that. The -p flag is how you take the option.

The -notint option disables Follow ColorSheme for folders on KDE Plasma. Plasma can recolour folder icons to match the desktop's own colour scheme, and the name of the option says that this theme turns that behaviour off. Why a theme would want to disable it is a reasonable question: if the user has already chosen a folder colour with the -t option, letting Plasma override it means the choice made at install time silently does not apply. The option exists so the chosen colour survives.

Both flags point at the same underlying reality, which is that an icon theme on a modern desktop is not a passive set of images. The desktop has its own opinions about folder colour, and a theme that wants a specific outcome has to override the desktop rather than hope. That is why an install script is needed at all, and it is a good reason to read the help output rather than assume the defaults do what you expect.

The README's own example pairs a scheme with a theme colour, install teal nord version, and runs ./install.sh -s nord -t teal. That is the two-dimensional choice reduced to one command, and the same pattern applies to the plasma options.

A TUI installer exists for people who would rather not read a flag list

There are two entry points, install.sh and tui_installer.sh, and the second one exists for the same reason the first one has a help option.

The flag list is nine lines, and every flag is a decision the user has to make correctly. A scheme, a folder colour, a destination, a theme name, and four switches for optional variants. Getting the combination wrong is not dangerous, but it is annoying, and a user who does not know what nord is cannot discover it from the README, which lists the palette names without describing them.

A terminal user interface walks through the choices instead. The repository does not describe what the TUI looks like, so its structure is something to check by running it, but the existence of a second script with a name rather than a flag tells you the author expected the audience to include people who would rather answer prompts than compose a command line, and that they are choosing the combination interactively.

The two scripts also divide the work differently in principle. install.sh is the deterministic path: same flags, same result, and it can be reproduced in a script or a dotfiles repository. tui_installer.sh is the exploratory path, for someone who wants to see the choices. Having both is what makes the theme usable in a dotfiles setup as well as by a person at a desktop, and the presence of a --dest option with a home directory default supports the dotfiles reading, since the destination is the thing a reproducibility script needs to vary.

The -n, --name option, which specifies the theme name and defaults to Colloid, supports the same pattern. It sets the name of the installed theme directory, so a user who wants a Colloid and a WhiteSur-style variant side by side, or wants a differently named copy of the same icons, can install more than one.

The releases are dated snapshots rather than version numbers

The release history has an unusual shape, and it is worth understanding before you pin anything.

The three recent releases are named 2026-08-10, 2025-07-19 and 2025-02-09, and each is named for its own date rather than for a version number. So the sequence is a release on 10 August 2026, one on 19 July 2025 and one on 9 February 2025, and the last push was on 2026-08-29, three weeks after the newest release.

For a theme that is generated from templates by a script, naming the release after the day it was produced is a sensible convention, since the artefact is a build output and the build date is the meaningful identifier. It also means there is no semver to reason about and no upgrade path documented, since the README has no migration notes and no changelog.

The consequence for a user is straightforward. The thing you install is not a source archive, it is a generated directory of images, and upgrading means running the installer again with the same flags against a newer tree. There is no upgrade command, and nothing in the documentation suggests one is needed, because the installer overwrites the destination directory.

For a dotfiles setup that matters more than it might seem. If the destination is versioned in a dotfiles repository, the generated images are large binary artefacts that will show up as noise in every diff, and the sensible arrangement is to run the installer as part of a provisioning step rather than to commit its output. The --dest option and the --name option exist to make that workable, since you can point the script at a build directory and name the result as your dotfiles expect.

The project itself is licensed under GPL-3.0, which for an icon theme means the artwork is copyleft, and the repository is a GPL-3.0 project with a LICENSE file at the root.

Where Colloid is the wrong choice

The limits are the ordinary limits of a shell-script icon theme, and they are about integration rather than about the artwork.

The first is that there is no package. The theme is installed by running a script from a clone, into a directory in your home. There is no apt package, no flake, and the README does not mention either. On a managed or locked-down desktop, where the icons directory is provisioned by configuration management, or where the user does not run arbitrary scripts from a repository, this is a hard stop rather than an inconvenience. A distribution packager can fix it by packaging the release directory, and the presence of a release/ directory suggests that is the intended path for packagers.

The second is that the icons are static once generated. Because the folder colour is chosen at install time, changing your desktop colour scheme later does not change the folder colour, and the -notint option exists precisely to stop Plasma from doing that for you. The result is that a theme chosen once stays chosen, and a user who likes to follow their wallpaper or GTK theme has to reinstall to get a new folder colour. That is the trade the design makes in exchange for the folder being exactly the colour you asked for.

The third is the desktop coverage. The options name KDE Plasma explicitly, and the alternative icons are for the software center and the file manager. On a desktop with a different file manager, the alternative set may not apply, and the -a option buys nothing.

The fourth is that there is no documentation of what is in the theme. The README gives a preview image and the option list, and the repository has folders.png and schemes.png as further previews, but there is no list of how many icons are included, which applications are covered, or what the dark/ and release/ directories differ in beyond their names. For someone deciding whether the theme covers the applications they use, that means opening the folders.

The fifth is simply the size of the field. The icon theme ecosystem on Linux is crowded and includes several well known alternatives with their own install scripts and their own variant systems. Colloid's distinguishing feature is the combination of a wide scheme list and a wide folder colour list generated from templates, and if that specific combination is not what you want, the argument for this theme over another one gets thin.

Editorial conclusion

Colloid is worth installing if you use a Linux desktop with XDG icons and want folder colours that match your colour scheme, because the install script renders the variants rather than shipping a separate download for each combination. It is the wrong choice for a desktop that expects icons from a distribution package, since the theme is installed by copying files into your home directory and is not packaged for apt, and it is the wrong choice if you need the icons to be regenerated automatically when your theme changes. Before installing, read the option list with ./install.sh -h, decide whether you want the bold panel icons, and check that the destination default of $HOME/.local/share/icons is where your desktop looks for icons.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: GPL-3.0
3. README
4. Releases
5. vinceliuice/Colloid-icon-theme on GitHub