Adwaita vs Ubuntu Yaru
アドワイタ / Ubuntu Yaru
Both sit in Platform Screen Languages, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Adwaita
Adwaita is the name GNOME gives its default visual style, defined in the project's Human Interface Guidelines. One set of components has to carry a light style, a dark style and a high contrast style, so colour arrives as named variables that switch rather than as fixed values. A header bar crosses the top of every window holding buttons drawn with no background and no border, and interface icons are monochrome symbolics built on a 16 by 16 pixel grid.
Ubuntu Yaru
Ubuntu's community-built default theme overlays Adwaita-based GTK and GNOME Shell with Ubuntu orange, dark header bars and Suru-derived icons, distributing windows, shell, icons, cursors and sound as one suite.
| Adwaita | Ubuntu Yaru | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2011– | 2018– |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | A single header bar across the top of the window, laid out on three alignment points with the window heading in the centre / Header bar buttons carry no background and no border, leaving only the symbol and the label on the surface / Monochrome symbolic icons drawn at 16 by 16 pixels with 2 pixel strokes and no perspective / A published palette of five steps per hue, including Blue 3 at #3584e4 | Light window body contrasted with a dark header bar / Ubuntu orange for selection and focus / Suru-derived icons based on circles, squares and vertical or horizontal oblongs / One-pixel icon edge, restrained gradient and lower shadow |
| Best used for | Building a Linux desktop app that has to hold the same structure in both the light and the dark setting · Adding a custom widget by riding on the existing style classes and colour variables instead of hard coding values | Unifying the Ubuntu desktop, default applications and distribution assets · Adding a distribution identity while remaining compatible with upstream GNOME |
| Type | Identify a control with either an icon or a label, not both. The exceptions are sidebar rows and view switchers. | Use Ubuntu type and short labels; avoid lettering inside icons. |
| Composition | Put a header bar at the top, main actions at the start, the heading in the middle, menus at the end. Always leave blank area so the bar can be dragged. Group buttons with spacing rather than by linking them. | Preserve GTK structure, using the dark header and orange focus ring to declare the active window. |
| Material | Take colour from the published palette and hold it as variables that swap for light, dark and high contrast. Draw icons as monochrome SVG and recolour them programmatically. | Reuse the Suru palette, restrained gradients and translucent dark outlines to keep icons from drifting apart. |
| Caution | Hard coded colour values only break once someone switches to the dark or high contrast style, which is exactly the state the author never looks at. | Large overrides of Adwaita collide with application styling. Contain Ubuntu identity in color, headers and iconography instead of restructuring widgets. |