I was browsing screenshots of Inkscape and I saw some delightful Tango icons on some of them. And then I thought, I must have those Tango icons on my Inkscape too! Besides, I’ve been trying my hand at making my own Tango icons so I thought that’d make things even more appropriate.

So I explored the icons folder of Inkscape, /usr/share/inkscape/icons on Linux and %ProgramFiles%Inkscapeshareicons on Windows, and I found two files: icons.svg and tango_icons.svg. That means Inkscape already comes with Tango icons! Except they’re not enabled by default.

Here’s how to change those ugly Inkscape interface icons to the much more beautiful Tango icons!

On Linux, just open a terminal, run the following command and restart Inkscape:

$ ln -s /usr/share/inkscape/icons/tango_icons.svg ~/.inkscape/icons/icons.svg

On Windows, navigate to %ProgramFiles%Inkscapeshareicons. Rename icons.svg to something else like old_icons.svg and rename tango_icons.svg to icons.svg. Then restart Inkscape.

Et voila! You’re good to go :D Click the image below for a before/after screenshot! No, I didn’t make that Tango Ubuntu icon.

Inkscape before and after applying Tango icons

Inkscape before and after applying Tango icons

Back to top