actions/view-app-grid-symbolic.svg "Show Apps" icon blurry

[herbanonymous]

What Linux distro are you using?

CachyOS x86_64

What Desktop environment are you using?

GNOME 48.4

How did you install Papirus icon theme on your computer?

pacman

Is this issue related to an app?

No response

Describe the issue

Subjective blurriness rating (blurriest first, less blurry is better) [with count of gray pixels visible per quadrant of the nine dots in the icon]:

1. Papirus [36 grey pixels]
2. Adwaita (default) [15 gray pixels]
3. Paper [3 gray pixels] All this on a 2880x1800 display

Relevant locations:

/usr/share/icons/Adwaita/symbolic/actions/view-app-grid-symbolic.svg
/usr/share/icons/Paper/scalable/actions/view-app-grid-symbolic.svg
/usr/share/icons/Papirus/16x16/symbolic/actions/view-app-grid-symbolic.svg
/usr/share/icons/Papirus/22x22/symbolic/actions/view-app-grid-symbolic.svg
/usr/share/icons/Papirus/24x24/symbolic/actions/view-app-grid-symbolic.svg

Attached screenshots:

Theory: Grey pixels are necessary to depict rounded icons without jagged MS Paint--style edges. However, Adwaita uses less pixels to achieve a more rounded look, while Paper, the sharpest of all, manages to ever-so-slightly round off the corners using only three pixels. (They are in reality SVG, of course, and pixel counts are based on my screenshots. It's just hard to objectively measure blur.) But what's the problem with the SVG file? It looks fine to me! I don't know! Maybe something about the size and the scaling. Why do you have three SVG files when the other themes have one? Is it turning the svg into a 24x24 scaled raster and then scaling it again because my screen is 2880x1800?

Rationale for change: Papirus is used to for icons that are flat and simple, a theme prized for its crisp edges or something like that.

My temporary fixes I tried:

1. I just deleted the three offending SVG files. Seems to work but then it's giving up.
2. I did try the installer script but that just made it blurry again.
3. I'll replace them with the Paper icons by moving those to the directory. Didn't work, so maybe the directory names that specify specific sizes are the problem? Make "Show Apps" from a fixed action into a scalable action.

Checklist

• [x] I have searched the existing issues to make sure that's not a duplicate
• [x] I updated Papirus icon theme to the last available commit (use Papirus Installer to update)
• [x] Switching the icon theme to the default (Adwaita for GNOME Shell, Breeze for KDE Plasma) is fixing the issue

[herbanonymous]

Okay, I think I may have fixed the problem in shell (after logging in as root).

1. Create the directory Papirus/scalable/actions/ with the "parent directories" option.
2. In Papirus/index.theme, append scalable/actions to the Directories "list".
3. In Papirus/index.theme, append this to the end of the file:

[scalable/actions]
Context=Actions
Size=16
MinSize=16
MaxSize=512
Type=Scalable

4. Copy from /usr/share/icons/Papirus/16x16/symbolic/actions/view-app-grid-symbolic.svg to new directory Papirus/scalable/actions/
5. Change the icon theme to default then back to Papirus

Works on my machine. Thank you for your time and efforts in reading my long posts. I tend to just write down any thought that pops into my head.

[dotjax]

It needs to be appended to the "ScaledDirectories" for me, like this:

# Directory list
Directories=...(lots of directories)...symbolic/status,scalable/actions

ScaledDirectories=...(lots of directories)...symbolic/status,scalable/actions

I don't know if it needs to be in both directory lists, but I put it in both.

[zJairO]

Same issue

GNOME 49

Arch Linux

X2 scaling

[RosemaryKoshy]

I'm still getting this on Arch Linux OS, GNOME version 49, and 1920 x 1080 (16:9) resolution. Can someone create a pull request? papirus-icon-theme version is 20250501-1 and gtk-update-icon-cache is 1:4.20.3-1.

EDIT:

It needs to be appended to the "ScaledDirectories"

@dotjax Is it true that it "needs" to be appended to "ScaledDirectories"? I would like more information. It shouldn't need to be in both if I'm not mistaken.

[dotjax]

I'm not sure, that's just what I did and it works.

This didn't work: Directories=...(lots of directories)...symbolic/status,scalable/actions

But then I did this, too, and it did work: ScaledDirectories=...(lots of directories)...symbolic/status,scalable/actions

[dotjax]

Update: Only using Directories=...(lots of directories)...symbolic/status,scalable/actions does not work, but ScaledDirectories=...(lots of directories)...symbolic/status,scalable/actions does work for me. Not sure why my system is so different. I'm on Fedora 43.