I tried to apply dracula gtk theme and placed the theme in .themes folder but when i apply it from the gnome tweaks then i found that the theme is not working fully in the system only the terminal is changed everything else unchanged.
OS: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS x86_64
Kernel: 6.8.0-52-generic
DE: GNOME 46.0
WM: Mutter
Mention other details like which distro, what GNOME version, and so on. This will help people have a better look at your situation.
I have mentioned the details now
Itās probably a libadwaita problem.
I also think its a libadwaita problemā¦
One of the problems of installing themes in Linux, is if the theme is too far out of date, it will not display properly. Even though there are billions of themes out there, a majority of them are not kept up to date. Wayland has a lot to answer for, as to why things donāt look right too. Try logging in with X11 instead of Wayland, to see if it displays properly? Wayland still is not there yet, loads of apps still has to migrate over to it too. I give it thirty years.
Iām not sure @Froz1x will agree on that 
x11 is dead.
Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant
Wayland still relies on X11, hence X Wayland. Iām actually going to try Wayland in Zorin OS, now that I have upgraded my Graphic Card to AMD RX 9060 XT with 16GB of VRAM. This is on my spare gaming PC, which is currently going to be used to try out new Linux, as got fed up with 24.04 not recognising my NVIDIA 4060 TI 16GB VRAM card, leaving me no choice but to display in safe graphic mode all the time, but with AMD, straight to the OS. Iām not a fan of Wayland, as OBS-Studio and other software does not play ball with it, or at least it was the last time I tried Wayland. Iām old school, love things to work out of the bag.
I changed from nvidia to amd for the same reason.
Most distros now have amdgpu driver and matching firmware.
One exception I found is NetBSD.
Wayland is only half a system , compared to X11.
Every iteration of Gnome - I get the same thing - less and less āfeaturesā from a theme work - i.e. only work on some appsā¦
As mentioned by others - itās a libadwaita thingā¦
I have a MacOS āWhiteSur-Darkā GTK theme - it works in Gnome Terminal :
But not Gnome Files (Nautilus) :
thatās libadwaitaā¦
But at least the Gnome-Tweaks option to put controls on the left works consistently.
Some apps 100% ignore nearly everything - e.g. Brave (but still puts āX_ ā on the left. Steam ignores everythingā¦
Another Gnome Extension I use āRounded Cornersā works for everything - even Steamā¦ (Note this one is called āRounded Window Corners Rebornā)
I was checking out Red Hat 10 recently (in KVM / virt-manager) - it has Gnome 47 (and defaults to Wayland) - so I went looking for Gnome Tweaks - found it ānowhereāā¦ Went to a RHEL 10 page - and they said something like "you no longer need gnome tweaks - everything is in the settings applet " - MY ARSE IT IS! How pathetic! Wasnāt about to try and find it elsewhere (e.g. RPMFusion, EPEL) so gave upā¦ Last time I ran Fedora - I could install gnome-tweaks from the default repoā¦
You kinda need Gnome Tweaks (in my experience - Gnome is practically useless without it - it should be included by default!) just to do some basic stuff - e.g. allow user themes in $HOME (e.g. ~/.themes, ~/.icons)..
Why should an app pay attantion to DE rules. I thought an app should be DE-Agnostic?
It is surely the DEās responsibility to apply its themes across the board.
No idea mate - Iāve seen similar in XFCE too - i.e. apply a GTK theme - and not everything āhonoursā the look and feelā¦
But itās kinda worse with latest gnome versions (e.g. 42, 43 and later) - some apps will only theme (i.e. draw an application window) with Adwaitaā¦
Because the DE makers are lazy . They do not tailor each app to their DE, or make their DE do it automatically.
Some distros try and make all the apps and the DE follow a distro ālookāā¦ others like Gentoo do nothing and every app has its own vanilla look.
I really do not know where the responsibility lies?
I use my own theme in Xfce, took me three or so years to find a dedicated theme, to cover GTK2 and 3, let alone GTK4 that Linux is adopting now. Orchis-Grey-Dark with Sardi-Ghost-Flexible Icons, coloured grey and slightly bevelled, which I done in GIMP. Sardi-Ghost-Flexible Icons can change the colour around, with inbuilt scripts.
I delete all the themes in Linux Mint Xfce and their icon themes, add my Orchis and Sardi themes, update the Papirus-Icons to 2025 version and I get proper arrows for back and forward buttons in Nemo, that I use in Xfce. Sardi and Papirus icons collaborate great together. I get rid of Yaru Icon Theme as well, otherwise left with nasty looking half triangular back and forward buttons in Nemo.
I hate Linux Mintās themes, as they have nasty undershoot lines. Linux is all about making it your own and not being tied to how the Devs want you to use it. Gnome is a funny creature, very locked down and having to install shell-extensions all the time to change itās appearance or to get something to work properly, seems weird to me. Zorin OS 24.04 has loads of different layouts. I paid for the pro version of Zorin OS and they have Linux Mintās appearance, right down to the menu.
Again though, these are either extensions, or they are what the Zorin OS team made up themselves??
The ISO download of the pro version was 8.1GB, that is with X11 and Wayland built in, plus Snapd, GIMP, LibreOffice, all sorts of other software for creators and artists. I installed the minimal version, as only got 1TB M.2 drive on my spare PC.
I have noticed that LibAdwaita changes the theme looks too in Apps. Celluloid has the option to go back to normal, if only other Apps would do the same, then there would not be all this mismatch all the time.
