Theming

A look themes the desktop in one pass: compositor ring and background, bar colors, session wallpaper, and (later pieces as they land) greeter, locker, launcher, terminal, GTK and dark mode. Today the profile applies the look to the compositor, the bar and the wallpaper — pick one with look in the desktop profile:

Look	Ring / background	Wallpaper
music-desk	blue #3D579A on paper #FCFBFB	ships
radial-burst	blue #31a9e5 on plum #241721	ships
moonrise	amber #FF9A49 on slate navy #2B3648	ships
vinyl-sunset	orange #E59560 on espresso #271A1F	flat color (the illustration is yours to download)

(Previews: real screenshots of each example, captured from live sessions. The vinyl-sunset wallpaper illustration stays under its Pixabay license — the example’s [wallpaper] table points at a copy you download, never a committed file.)

Each example is one directory with the same shape — scoot.toml (the compositor: layout, appearance, binds), bar.toml (the bar), regreet.css (the login screen), plus terminal and tool configs that follow the palette:

• vinyl-sunset
• music-desk
• radial-burst
• moonrise

With Stylix present the look yields per key (your explicit value > Stylix > the look); look = "auto" matches your own wallpaper the same way once the theme-look work lands.

Stylix

When config.lib.stylix exists and stylix.enable is on, programs.scoot.settings gets defaults from it — the compositor’s half of a themed desktop, next to the bar’s. The module never imports Stylix; nothing changes without it, and programs.scoot.stylix.enable = false turns the defaults off with it present. (Home-manager only: the NixOS module renders no config file.)

Setting	From	Notes
appearance.focus_ring_active_color	base16 base0D	The focused ring.
appearance.focus_ring_inactive_color	base16 base03	Every other ring.
appearance.background_color	base16 base00	The frame clear color.
appearance.cursor_theme	stylix.cursor.name	Only when stylix.cursor is set.
appearance.cursor_size	stylix.cursor.size	Only when stylix.cursor is set.
wallpaper.image	stylix.image	Only when set; setting it is what turns wallpaper.enable on.
wallpaper.mode	stylix.imageScalingMode	Only when set (fill, fit, stretch, center, tile).

Precedence per key: your settings value, then Stylix’s, then the compositor default. One combination is invalid: your own wallpaper.color plus Stylix’s image (scoot takes image or color, never both) — for a solid color under Stylix, set programs.scoot.stylix.wallpaper.enable = false, set your own image, or turn stylix.enable off. cursor_color has no Stylix convention and stays at the compositor default.

Make a look

A look is data, so new ones are cheap: one directory with the same shape as the four above — palette, scoot.toml, bar.toml, regreet.css, and a wallpaper (an image, or a palette color for a license-clean look like vinyl-sunset’s flat espresso). Per-target opt-out is Stylix-style, under one namespace, one flag per themed piece (every target defaults on):

programs.scoot.desktop.theme.targets.lock.enable = false;  # keep swaylock's own style

desktop.bar.enable keeps its meaning (“manage the bar at all”) and is never a theme switch. Where looks are headed (the standing direction, not all of it shipped): the look list reads from a registry rather than a hand-written enum, so adding a look means adding its directory and a check renders every look into every target; look = "auto" matches your own wallpaper; and a user-passed look (a path or attrset with the same shape) works the same way. look only ever gains values — existing configs keep working.