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Pywal🤝Zen

Pywal colors for Zen Browser. Sidebar, tabs, background and the ctrl+t popup follow your wallpaper, live, no restart

Why?

Pywalfox works fine on firefox, but on zen nothing happens. Two reasons:

1. zen ignores firefox themes by default (zen.theme.disable-lightweight)
2. zen paints its ui with its own variables, the sidebar bg is the workspace gradient

This turns themes back on and points zen's variables at the pywalfox colors

pywal	where
color0	background (gradient with a bit of accent)
color15	text
color10	accent, selected tab, ctrl+t outline

Auto install

Needed: Zen Browser, Pywal, python3

git clone https://github.com/selvarn/pywal-zen
cd pywal-zen
./install.sh

The script installs the pywalfox native host (pipx or a venv), copies the css into your zen profile and sets the prefs in user.js. Running it again is fine.

• --profile DIR use a specific profile (see about:profiles)
• --skip-pywalfox skip the native host if you set it up yourself

Then:

1. install the pywalfox addon
2. restart zen

Manual install

1. Set up the pywalfox native host (docs)
2. Copy chrome/pywal-zen.css to <profile>/chrome/
3. Add @import url("pywal-zen.css"); at the top of <profile>/chrome/userChrome.css
4. Copy the prefs from user.js or set them in about:config
5. install the pywalfox addon
6. Restart zen

Uninstall

Remove the @import line and pywal-zen.css, reset the prefs, run pywalfox uninstall and remove the addon. Or just disable the pywalfox theme, the css only applies while it's on.

To recolor after changing wallpaper:

wal -i ~/Pictures/wall.png && pywalfox update

Notes

The css uses zen internals (.zen-browser-generic-background, --zen-main-browser-background etc), so a zen update can break it. Open an issue if something stops getting colored.

Tested on zen 1.22b, arch + hyprland.

license

MIT