GENERAL TIPS AND TRICKS

We’ll start by providing a few general tips, then demonstrate some examples.

Changing the theme to dark/light

Changing Kali’s look isn’t overly complicated, but if you are switching the dark/light theme or want to install a new one, you need to know which settings will make the whole desktop look uniform. Those are the following:

• Appearance theme
• Icon theme
• Window Manager theme
• Terminal color scheme
• Text editor color scheme

GENERAL SCRIPT

With these scripts you can quickly switch between Kali’s light/dark themes. The only thing you need to change manually is qterminal’s color scheme.

LIGHT THEME

DARK THEME

Once you’ve selected the one you want to modify, go to the Appearance tab, change the Background?Style setting to Solid color and use the color selector that will appear below. In case you want to adjust its opacity or make it completely transparent, move the slider located under the color box.

The icon selector will show you all the icons already installed on your computer, but, if you want, you can use a custom image as well. Here are the ones I’ve used:

Improve the taskbar with Plank

Plank is a customizable dock.

Plank is meant to be the simplest dock on the planet. The goal is to provide just what a dock needs and absolutely nothing more.

The only tricky part is that you need to configure it to launch on login. To do so, open the Session and Startup application and add Plank to the autostart list.

As with Xfce-panel, you will need to disable dock shadows. Otherwise, it will draw a shadow line in the middle of your desktop.

Window Manager Tweaks ? Compositor ? disable Show shadows under dock windows

Tip: If you want to open Plank settings, press Ctrl + Right-click over it. You can change the theme and make it completely transparent.

Numerical workspace switcher

In many cases, the numerical workspace switcher looks better than the miniature view. To configure it, disable the Show miniature view inside the widget’s settings (right-click it ? Preferences). Then, open the workspace settings and manually replace their names with numbers.

It is crucial to disable Xfwm compositing before launching Compton (inside Window Manager Tweaks ? Compositor), and you will need to add it to the autostart list as well. I also recommend disabling the Draw frame around selected window while cycling option. Alternatively, you can use the following command:

Restore Kali’s default appearance

If you want to undo all the visual changes that you’ve applied to your desktop, simply run:

SOME CUSTOMIZATION EXAMPLES

Bear in mind all customizations are based using Kali’s default settings as the start point. Therefore, it may be easier to follow these customizations after restoring desktop defaults.