Saturday, April 27, 2013

Google Chrome theme fix on Linux

(Off-topic: this is my first post in more than two years on this blog! In the meantime, I learned to speak English better and I forgot most of my Linux know-how...)

Right, so Google inadvertently fscked things up with Chrome (which, with all its downsides, is still the best browser in my opinion) – with the Chrome themes, to be more precise. Since you normally get them via the Google Store, the ones that you've already tried out are displayed as being already installed. However, if you want to use an old (installed!) theme again... you might not be able to. It's shown as installed, but there's no means to choose it. You can't uninstall it either, since it's not an app, but a – erm – theme.

Too confusing? Okay, suppose you want to switch from theme 1 that you've been using to theme 2. After a while, it becomes boring and you want to switch to theme 1 again. The workaround that I found is that you have to delete theme 1, in order to be able to install it and use it... again. Nope, it's not very intelligent, but that's the way Chrome coders code their stuff. And since it's free, you don't have the right to complain.

So fire up a terminal and search for your installed themes:
find ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/ -type f -iname *pak
You'll get results that might look something like this:
/home/user/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/bfjgbcjfpbbfepcccpaffkjofcmglifg/1.0_0/Cached Theme.pak
Now you'd just need to delete that directory:
rm -fr /home/user/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/bfjgbcjfpbbfepcccpaffkjofcmglifg
After you restart your browser, you'll be able to pick and install the theme you want from the Google Store.

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