Why are the top application indicators (top bar icons) appearing black and white in Ubuntu 20.04?

Question

Why are these app indicators appearing in black and white color? Not sure if this was the case while using Ubuntu 18.04. Can something be done to make the app indicators use their original default icon color.

Answer 1

Because they are configured to show as symbolic and symbolic Icons are generally in light gray or whatever we see in actual from the gnome-shell theme currently used.

So navigate to the gnome-shell theme you are using and try to locate "symbolic".

For example the left part on top bar:

#panel .panel-button .app-menu-icon {
  margin-left: 4px;
  margin-right: 4px;
  -st-icon-style: symbolic;
}

change the -st-icon-style: regular;

Another example:

.aggregate-menu {
  min-width: 21em;
}
.aggregate-menu .popup-menu-icon {
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0 4px;
  -st-icon-style: regular;
}

---

In the default installation of Ubuntu 20.04, the shell theme is from the gresource file /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/Yaru/gnome-shell-theme.gresource which can not be edited easily.

Hence the workaround is to create a custom theme in home directory.

Required: User Themes gnome-shell-extension installed and enabled

Install required directory's and gnome-shll.css file with below command, Change the name "MyCustomTheme" in below command to your wish.

install -D /dev/null ~/.themes/MyCustomTheme/gnome-shell/gnome-shell.css

now open the file gnome-shell.css with below command

gedit ~/.themes/MyCustomTheme/gnome-shell/gnome-shell.css

paste the below content in the opened gnome-shell.css file

#panel .panel-button .app-menu-icon {
  -st-icon-style: regular;
}

save the file & close.

Now open gnome-tweaks and choose this newly created shell-theme "MyCustomTheme".