AWF - A widget factory (extended)

A widget factory is a theme preview application for GTK and Qt. It displays the various widget types in a single window allowing to see the visual effect of the applied theme.

🆕 New Qt version! Theme support requires GlobalQSS.

Screenshots

GTK 2.24 (Pango 1.57)

GTK 3.24-classic (Pango 1.57)

GTK 4.12..4.21-classic (Pango 1.57)

GTK 5.0 (Pango 1.57)
GtkWindow will be probably deprecated... lol

Qt 5.15

Qt 6.9

Theme used for the screenshots is available here.

Tricks

• Some options are available from the command line (see -h, --help, or the man page)
• The Options menu allows you to display some standard dialogs
• The System and User Themes menu allows you to set the current theme
• The Text Direction menu allows you to change the text direction (LTR/RTL)
• The Info toolbar button allows you to display a notification
• The Plus/Minus toolbar buttons allow you to show/hide notebook arrows, marks on progress bars and scales...
• The Refresh toolbar button and menu item allow you to reload the current theme (like the SIGHUP signal)
• Notebook tabs are scrollable (GTK 3.x & 4.x, gtk-scroll-tabs, like with GTK 2.24 + Qt 5.15 & 6.x)
• Menu keyboard shortcuts can be updated on hover (GTK 2.24 & 3.x + Qt 5.15 & 6.x, gtk-can-change-accels)
• Use UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=awf-gtk3 on Ubuntu to allow updating menu keyboard shortcuts on hover
• Use GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=0 to make scrollbars always visible (GTK 3.16+ & 4.x)
• Use GTK_CSD=1 to enable CSD windows (GTK 3.12+ & 4.x)
• Use AWF_DEBUG=1 to enable some debug messages
• Use AWF_TEAROFF=1 to add a tear-off item to the Options menu (GTK 2.24 & 3.x + Qt 5.15 & 6.x)

Installation

For GTK, it requires GTK 2.24 or GTK 3.0+ (including 3.24) or GTK 4.0+ (including 4.21), GLIB 2.28+, libnotify 0.7+.

For Qt, it requires Qt 5.15 or Qt 6.0+ (including 6.10), GlobalQSS for theme support.

Installation for Debian, Devuan, Ubuntu, Trisquel, Linux Mint, MX Linux

• sudo apt install awf-gtk2 awf-gtk3 awf-gtk4 awf-qt5 awf-qt6

Installation for Fedora

• sudo dnf install awf-gtk2 awf-gtk3 awf-gtk4 awf-qt5 awf-qt6

Installation for openSUSE

• sudo zypper install awf-gtk2 awf-gtk3 awf-gtk4 awf-qt5 awf-qt6

Installation for Mageia

• sudo urpmi awf-extended-gtk2 awf-extended-gtk3 awf-extended-gtk4 awf-extended-qt5 awf-extended-qt6

Building from source

• To compile with all available major versions of GTK and Qt available run: build.sh
• To compile and create DEB packages for Debian & Ubuntu run: scripts/debian-[gtkx|qtx]/deb.sh
• To compile and create RPM packages for Fedora run: scripts/fedora/rpm-[gtkx|qtx].sh
• To compile and create RPM packages for Mageia run: scripts/mageia/rpm-[gtkx|qtx].sh
• To compile and create RPM packages for openSUSE run: scripts/opensuse/rpm-[gtkx|qtx].sh

Alternative installation for Debian, Devuan, Ubuntu, Trisquel, Linux Mint, MX Linux

# PPA: https://launchpad.net/~luigifab/+archive/ubuntu/packages
# from Debian 12 you can use noble/questing (unix.stackexchange.com/a/669008/364800)
#     Debian: focal for 10/buster, jammy for 11/bullseye, noble for 12/bookworm,
#              plucky for 13/trixie, questing for 14/forky and 15/duke
#     Devuan: focal for 3/beowulf, jammy for 4/chimaera, noble for 5/daedalus,
#              plucky for 6/excalibur, questing for 7/freia and 8/gryphon and ceres
# Linux Mint: focal for 20.x and 4/debbie, jammy for 21.x and 5/elsie,
#              noble for 22.x and 6/faye, plucky for 7/gigi
#   MX Linux: focal for 19.x, jammy for 21.x, noble for 23.x, questing for 25.x
#   Trisquel: focal for nabia, jammy for aramo
# Kali Linux: questing

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:luigifab/packages
sudo apt update
sudo apt install awf-gtk2 awf-gtk3 awf-gtk4 awf-qt5 awf-qt6
# or
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys FFE5BD439356DF7D
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/luigifab/packages/ubuntu focal main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install awf-gtk2 awf-gtk3 awf-gtk4 awf-qt5 awf-qt6
# or
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/luigifab.gpg https://www.luigifab.fr/apt.gpg
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/luigifab/packages/ubuntu focal main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install awf-gtk2 awf-gtk3 awf-gtk4 awf-qt5 awf-qt6
# or
wget -qO - https://www.luigifab.fr/apt.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/luigifab.gpg
echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/luigifab/packages/ubuntu focal main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install awf-gtk2 awf-gtk3 awf-gtk4 awf-qt5 awf-qt6

# ... and for full installation
sudo apt install qt5-gtk-platformtheme qt5-style-globalqss qttranslations5-l10n qt6-gtk-platformtheme qt6-style-globalqss qt6-svg-plugins qt6-translations-l10n libnotify-bin

# sha256sum /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/luigifab.gpg
578c89a677048e38007462d543686b53587efba9f93814601169253c45ff9213
# apt-key list
/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/luigifab.gpg
pub   rsa4096 2020-10-31 [SC]
      458B 0C46 D024 FD8C B8BC  99CD FFE5 BD43 9356 DF7D

Known issues

GTK 3

For better results, use gtk3-classic.

GTK 4

For better results, use gtk4-classic.

If font rendering is bad, try to add in ~/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini:

[Settings]
gtk-font-rendering=manual
gtk-hint-font-metrics=1
gtk-xft-hintstyle=hintfull
gtk-xft-antialias=0
gtk-xft-hinting=1

GTK 5

From migrating guide: non-standard CSS extensions are going away [...] @define-color should be replaced [...] the color functions can all be replaced by combinations of calc() and color-mix().

I think it would be nice to create a patch to fix this GTK regression.

Qt 5 & 6

Not everything is working yet.

On Fedora with Qt 5, the GTK 3 platform theme (qt5-qtbase-gui) works better than on Debian (qt5-gtk-platformtheme), but the fonts remain blurry.

Customize

For GTK, use ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css files.

For Qt, with GlobalQSS, use ~/.config/qt5/qt.qss and ~/.config/qt6/qt.qss files.

#AwfMainWindow { }
#AwfMainWindow AwfTreeView { qproperty-columnWidths:"1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11"; /* qt */ }
.awf-cheatcode-colorbtn { background:red; /* qt */ }
.awf-cheatcode-fontbtn { background:red; /* qt */ }
.awf-cheatcode-filebtn { background:red; /* qt + gtk 4 */ }
.awf-cheatcode-folderbtn { background:red; /* qt + gtk 4 */ }
.awf-cheatcode-prbr2 { background:cyan; /* qt + gtk 3,4 */ }

Dev

To reload theme when source files change, you can use Entr with the SIGHUP signal:

sudo apt install entr  or  sudo dnf install entr  or  sudo zypper install entr  or  ...
ls ~/.themes/yourtheme/gtk-3*/*.css | entr killall -s SIGHUP awf-gtk3
ls ~/.themes/yourtheme/qt6/*.qss | entr killall -s SIGHUP awf-qt6

Copyright

• Current version: 4.0.0 (03/03/2026)
• Compatibility: GTK 2.24 / 3.0..3.24 / 4.0..4.21, Qt 5.15 / 6.0..6.10
• Links: luigifab.fr - github.com - ppa/dpa

This program is provided under the terms of the GNU GPLv3+ license.
If you like, take some of your time to improve the translations, go to https://bit.ly/2HyCCEc.

Packages in official distros repositories

Credits

Forked from awf by Valère Monseur (valr).