How to install the Zafiro icon pack on Linux

The Zafiro icon pack is a flat, clean icon theme created for Linux users. It follows along with the ever-popular flat design scheme that many other Linux icon themes stick to these days, but with a twist. Each of the icons is carefully crafted, well colored, and beautiful to look at.

If you’re looking for a brand new icon theme to replace the one on your current Linux operating system, follow along with this guide and learn all about how to set up the Zafiro icon theme!

Download Zafiro icons

Getting a copy of the Zafiro icon theme can be done in two ways. The first way to grab Zafiro is by visiting it’s download page on Gnome-look.org, clicking “files” and choosing from one of the many different choices of icons available (Classic, Green, Purple, White-Yellow, Black-Red, and Variant.) The second way to download the Zafiro icons directly from its Git repository. In this guide, we’ll focus on both.

Downloading via Gnome-look

Choosing to download the Zafiro icon theme through gnome-look.org is a good choice if you want to try out Zafiro, but you’d prefer to try some of the color variants (like Purple, or Green) rather than the stock, default Zafiro setup. To start your download, head over to the Zafiro page on Gnome-look.org, and click on “Files.” Then, click the download icon next to one of the eight themes they have in the “Files” list.

Upon selecting the download icon, a pop-up window will appear on the screen. In this pop-up window, you’ll see a brief message that your download is ready to go. From there, select the blue “Download” button to save the theme to your Linux PC.

Feel free to download multiple Zafiro icon themes, as you like!

Extracting Zafiro icon files

When you download Zafiro icons files from Gnome-look, they come in a locked file archive. These files must be extracted so that the icon files inside can be installed correctly on a Linux system.

The quickest way to extract the Zafiro icon files on Linux is with the tar command in terminal. So, press Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, with the terminal window open, move to “Downloads” with the CD command.

cd ~/Downloads

Once inside of the “Downloads” directory, run the commands to extract the Zafiro icon archive files.

Classic

tar xvf Zafiro-Icons-Classic.tar.xz
rm Zafiro-Icons-Classic.tar.xz

Green

tar xvf Zafiro-Icons-green.tar.xz
rm Zafiro-Icons-green.tar.xz

Purple

tar xvf Zafiro-Icons-purple.tar.xz
rm Zafiro-Icons-purple.tar.xz

White-Yellow

tar xvf Zafiro-Icons-White-Yellow.tar.xz
rm Zafiro-Icons-White-Yellow.tar.xz

Black-Red

tar xvf Zafiro-Icons-Black-Red.tar.xz
rm Zafiro-Icons-Black-Red.tar.xz

Variant-A

tar xvf Zafiro-Icons-Variant-A.tar.xz
rm Zafiro-Icons-Variant-A.tar.xz

Light

tar xvf Zafiro-Icons-Light.tar.xz
rm Zafiro-Icons-Light.tar.xz

Blue

tar xvf Zafiro-Icons-Blue.tar.xz
rm Zafiro-Icons-Blue.tar.xz

Downloading via GitHub

Going the GitHub route for Zafiro is best if you want to use the icon theme, but don’t much care about the various color modifications on Gnome-look.org. To get a copy of the latest Zafiro icons from the developer’s GitHub page, you’ll first need to install the “git” package.

To install the “git” package on Linux, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, with the terminal window open, follow the command-line instructions below that correspond with the Linux OS you currently use.

Ubuntu

sudo apt install git

Debian

sudo apt-get install git

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S git

Fedora

sudo dnf install git

OpenSUSE

sudo zypper install git

Generic Linux

The “git” package is integral to a lot of Linux operating systems, as most developers use a Git-based source control system. As a result, the “git” tool should readily be available for installation on even the most unknown of Linux OSes. To install it, open up a terminal, search for “git” and install it the way you typically install software to your system. Or, download it from the official web site, here.

With the “git” package downloaded, use the CD command to move your terminal session from the home directory (~) to “Downloads.” After that, use the git clone command to pull down the latest Zafiro icon theme files.

cd ~/Downloads

git clone https://github.com/zayronxio/Zafiro-icons.git Zafiro-Icons

Installing Zafiro icons

There are two ways to install the Zafiro icons on Linux (system-wide and single-user). To start the installation, follow the instructions below.

Single-user

Installing Zafiro as a single-user is the best way to go if you’re the only one who will use the icon theme, and you don’t have plans to enable it for other users. To start, create a new folder labeled “.icons” using the mkdir command.

mkdir -p ~/.icons

Next, move the Zafiro icon folder(s) from the “Download” directory to the newly created “.icons” folder.

mv ~/Downloads/Zafiro-Icons* ~/.icons

When the mv command is complete, run ls to verify that the Zafiro icon folder(s) are in the right place.

ls ~/.icons | grep 'Zafiro'

System-wide

Need every user on your Linux PC to be able to use the Zafiro icon theme? If so, you must install it to “/usr/share/icons/” AKA a “system-wide” installation.

To start, move the terminal session from the home directory (~) to the “Downloads” folder using CD.

cd ~/Downloads

Then, use the mv command to place the Zafiro icon folder(s) inside “/usr/share/icons/”.

sudo mv Zafiro-Icons* /usr/share/icons/

When the mv command completes, run the ls command to check that the files made it to the right place.

ls /usr/share/icons/ | grep 'Zafiro'

Enabling Zafiro icons

To use Zafiro as your new icon theme on Linux, it must be enabled through appearance settings. Open up “System Settings” on your Linux PC, locate “icons” and set it as the default icon theme.

Unsure about how to set Zafiro as your default icon theme on Linux? Check out the links in the list below. They go over how to customize each Linux desktop environment, outline, in detail, how to change icon themes.