How to Change the Color of your Tooltips

With all the customization fun I’ve been having with my Ubuntu Desktop, one thing kept bugging me. There isn’t an easy way to change the color of the tooltips. I think this is important to have a consistent color scheme throughout your desktop so I went to find a solution.

I found the answer on the Ubuntu Forums yet again, posted by mcduck.

UPDATE: This may also work in other distributions, not just Ubuntu, since it is a GTK setting.

UPDATE: This seems to only work in Ubuntu 6.10 or lower. People have reported that it does not work in Feisty Fawn (7.04).

Now, when changing the color of the tooltips, it’s important to note that this will change it for ALL themes.

To change the color of the tooltips, do this:

1. gedit ~/.gtkrc-2.0
2. Copy and paste the following lines in that file:
   

   style “tooltip” { bg[NORMAL] = “#FFFFFF” }
   widget “gtk-tooltips” style “tooltip”

3. Change the Hex code (#FFFFFF) to whatever color you want.
4. Save the file.
5. Log out and log back in (or do a CTRL+BACKSPACE). You can probably just do a Desktop Refresh:
   

   killall nautilus gnome-panel

   …and it may work. I haven’t tested it, though.
   …TESTED: It works. NOTE: You’ll have to change ALL the smart quotes ” to regular quotes after you paste. Just delete them and type in the quotes again. Then do another killall nautilus gnome-panel. (2007.02.12)

Test it by placing your mouse over the Date and Time applet.

Enjoy!