Making Rhythmbox look like a real Gnome application

Just an update to my previous article…

The Gnome developers are – in their infinite wisdom – redesigning their applications to give a similar look and feel.  Key to this change are Client Side Decorations (CSD). Instead of the traditional window manager title & window controls, Client Side Decorations reuse this space to fit various key controls/buttons.

Rhythmbox is not there yet and whilst Gnome Music is still being developed to most probably replace Rhythmbox as the main music app in a future Gnome OS, Rhythmbox without CSD distinctly looks out of place – at least on Gnome-Shell.

When Rhythmbox gets CSDs is anyone’s guess – this bug-report hasnt met with any definitive response from the maintainers.

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Introducing Client Side Decorations for Rhythmbox

As you can see – a very different look from the standard Rhythmbox:

The new look is now available (by default) for all Gnome-Shell users after enabling my new plugin alternative-toolbar.

Don’t worry – if you are a non Gnome-Shell user you can still enable the new CSD look through the plugin preferences:

However, personally, I think CSD apps dont fit with other non-Gnome based apps and especially with menu-based traditional windows decorated desktops such as XFCE/LXDE & Unity.  Thus I’ve reused the same code to come up with a more streamlined Rhythmbox look:

Since this is a toolbar I’ve retained the previously mentioned ability to hide & show the standard larger Rhythmbox toolbar as well as the new compact toolbar via CTRL+T or by using the menu View – Show Toolbar:

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The instructions for installing via GIT are now slightly different:

cd ~/Downloads
git clone https://github.com/fossfreedom/alternative-toolbar.git
cd alternative-toolbar
./install.sh

If you are already a user of my rhythmbox-plugins PPA then just install the rhythmbox-plugin-alternative-toolbar package.

As always, if you have any interest in updating and adding to the newly enabled capability, just drop by the project webpage, drop and issue, fork and contribute.