Those of you who uses whisker menu may noticed that when you change the theme of your XFCE , it does not apply to the whisker menu , and that is not because the Whisker menu does not support GTK themes but because not all the GTK Themes supports Whisker menu or do include “whiskermenu-window” , so what i’am gonna share with you is an alternative or a work around .

All you need to do is create a .gtkrc-2.0 file in your Home directory ( if it’s not already present ) and add some code to it.

First go to your Home directory click on Edit then on show hidden files or Ctrl+H , now all the hidden files will be visible ,if you found a file named .gtkrc-2.0 that’s good if not then you have to create it .

To create the .gtkrc-2.0 file .Right click then Create document -> Empty file and name it “.gtkrc-2.0”

Now open it and Copy/Past the codes below to change the background color “bg” and the font color “fg”. Every time you change or add some something in this file “.gtkrc-2.0” you need to log out and log in or just change your theme .

style "darkback"
{
 bg[NORMAL] = "#787878"
 bg[ACTIVE] = "#004f9f"
 bg[PRELIGHT] = "#198cff"
 fg[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
 fg[ACTIVE] = "#fff"
 fg[PRELIGHT] = "#fff"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*" style "darkback"

Add this code below the first so you can change “TreeView” :

style "darktree"
{
 base[NORMAL] = "#404040"
 base[ACTIVE] = "#004f9f"
 
 text[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
 text[ACTIVE] = "#fff"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*TreeView*" style "darktree"

For the search bar or the “GtkEntry” Copy/Past this code:

style "darksearch"
{
 base[NORMAL] = "#404040"
 text[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*GtkEntry*" style "darksearch"

You can play with the hex codes to change the colors to mach your theme.

This whisker menu theme machs the Greybird :

style "darkback"
{
 bg[NORMAL] = "#787878"
 bg[ACTIVE] = "#004f9f"
 bg[PRELIGHT] = "#198cff"
 fg[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
 fg[ACTIVE] = "#fff"
 fg[PRELIGHT] = "#fff"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*" style "darkback"
style "darktree"
{
 base[NORMAL] = "#404040"
 base[ACTIVE] = "#004f9f" 
 text[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
 text[ACTIVE] = "#fff"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*TreeView*" style "darktree"
style "darksearch"
{
 base[NORMAL] = "#404040"
 text[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*GtkEntry*" style "darksearch"

Whisker menu theme for orange Numix:

style "darkback"
{
 bg[NORMAL] = "#787878"
 bg[ACTIVE] = "#cd5444"
 bg[PRELIGHT] = "#fe634e"
 fg[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
 fg[ACTIVE] = "#fff"
 fg[PRELIGHT] = "#fff"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*" style "darkback"
style "darktree"
{
 base[NORMAL] = "#404040"
 base[ACTIVE] = "#fe634e" 
 text[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
 text[ACTIVE] = "#fff"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*TreeView*" style "darktree"
style "darksearch"
{
 base[NORMAL] = "#404040"
 text[NORMAL] = "#ccc"
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*GtkEntry*" style "darksearch"

I hope you found this useful ,if you have any question feel free to ask.