Credit for many of these designs goes to Everaldo Coelho, Saki, Nuno Pinheiro, facsavar and the Tango/Gnome design team. Sadly, the word limit prevents me from listing everyone here. Full credits can be found in the readme.
This theme integrates and expands a number of 'skeuomorphic' icon themes of the noughties and 2010s. Its primary targets are KDE Plasma 5 and 6, yet thanks to the Linux icon naming specification the theme should also be compatible with other Desktop Environments, such as Gnome. Many of the icons are drawn from, or based on, icons from the Crystal Project, Gnome 3, NuoveXT (1 and 2) and Oxygen icon themes. The theme also introduces icons from other icon sets and new icons that were crafted from existing ones or made from scratch. Full credits and information about the licenses associated with these icons is included in the 'Credits' file.
This project began with an attempt to make NuoveXT2 compatible with modern Linux DEs. It quickly expanded into a much more ambitious attempt to provide a full replacement for the Breeze icon theme which would revive many of the icon designs of the Crystal/Oxygen era. Although this goal has not yet been achieved, Nova7 already contains more than 2200 icons, not counting size variations.
Version 4.1 is a maintenance release. It adds icons to the 'actions', 'apps', 'emblems' and 'status' categories and has been repackaged. The theme now supports:
Plans for version 4.5 of this icon theme include: * Further expansion of the actions supported; * Further expansion of the statuses supported.
Version 4.5 will likely come out around July/August 2025, time permitting.
Ready for high-resolution desktops: every icon available up to a size of 256*256 pixels.
***A note on symbolic icons***
This icon theme contains duplicates of some of its icons to which the suffix -symbolic has been added. This was done in order to force KDE Plasma 5 to draw Nova7's own icons instead of monochromatic alternatives from the Breeze theme if/when it requests a 'symbolic' icon.
From my testing, KDE Plasma 5 will use Breeze 'symbolic' icons instead of 'ordinary' ones even if Breeze is not listed under the 'inherits' heading in the index.theme file. Plasma 6 changes this behaviour, and first tries to load a non-symbolic icon from the theme itself before it attempts to load a fallback icon from the Breeze icon theme.
Unfortunately, Plasma 5 is not consistent in how it treats colourful icons with the -symbolic suffix. Whereas often it appears to render these icons as intended, it sometimes converts them into monochromatic, black-and-white icons. This can be seen in the 'Download New Icons' window, accessible via system settings: the 'Recent' button will load the clock icon correctly, whereas the 'Show Most Recent First' menu entry will render the same icon as a completely black circle.
Interestingly, Breeze also contains icons which only come in the 'symbolic' variety. That is to say, icons that do not have equivalents that only have the 'base' file name. An example of this is file-search-symbolic: at the time of writing, Breeze does not contain an icon called file-search. This theme provides its own alternatives for such icons, too.Last changelog:
Thanks for your comment! I've been working on a big update, which should come out within the next one or two months, depending on how much time I can allocate to making the final changes.
The update takes into account some of the changes made with the introduction of Plasma 6. Just to be sure, are you referring to the tray icon?
Thanks for the vote! It helps me stay motivated to work on this theme.
Concerning your suggestion: the advantages of doing that would be limited since Nova7 now exceeds the number of icons supported by Oxygen in multiple areas. There are, of course, icons included in Oxygen for which Nova7 does not yet have an equivalent. You will mainly find these in the 'actions' category, although, in my experience, none of the icons concerned are used widely used. Be this as it may, users with Oxygen installed can, of course, change the current 'Inherits' setting by editing the index.theme file.
10The most complete skeuomorphic icon theme I've been able to find. I can finally use the Oxygen desktop theme without the icons looking weird and mismatched.
Ratings & Comments
30 Comments
10 Changing my review to a 10 since the KMail icon hasn't been removed
10 Awesome and pretty consistent too! Fits great with my plasma oxygen setup.
10 Thy for this huuuge Icontheme *bg`
i log me mostly over pling.com into my account ;)
10 After testing a lot of icon themes this is the one to which I come back every time.
8 Very colorful and includes everything
10 Very pretty! They look nice.
Great job ! THANKS.
9 very Nice Collection
Big new update! I spent a lot of time on this one - I hope it shows!
One of my favorite icon themes, it would be great if it could be updated to have a proper volume icon for Plasma 6 though.
Thanks for your comment! I've been working on a big update, which should come out within the next one or two months, depending on how much time I can allocate to making the final changes. The update takes into account some of the changes made with the introduction of Plasma 6. Just to be sure, are you referring to the tray icon?
9 Very nice. Love the 3D 'retro' look
10 Using this with the plastique widget style. It looks great!
9 ¿May i give you a suggestion? :3 Inherit Oxygen iconset instead of inheriting Breeze
Thanks for the vote! It helps me stay motivated to work on this theme. Concerning your suggestion: the advantages of doing that would be limited since Nova7 now exceeds the number of icons supported by Oxygen in multiple areas. There are, of course, icons included in Oxygen for which Nova7 does not yet have an equivalent. You will mainly find these in the 'actions' category, although, in my experience, none of the icons concerned are used widely used. Be this as it may, users with Oxygen installed can, of course, change the current 'Inherits' setting by editing the index.theme file.
10 10 the best - Enjoying with Windows 7-2.1 Theme, thank you!
10 The most complete skeuomorphic icon theme I've been able to find. I can finally use the Oxygen desktop theme without the icons looking weird and mismatched.
10 10 the best
10 cool
10 The best icon theme in the linux world !!!Thank you very much FARQUINN !
Thank you for the review - and glad to hear you're enjoying this theme!
Wow, excellent update, thanks! This icon theme looks cool with Suave Global theme: https://store.kde.org/p/1513278/
You're welcome!
9 One of the few actually usable skeuomorphic icon themes! Great!