If you use Ubuntu’s latest release Lucid Lynx and you enjoy to chat with your friends using Skype, then you might have noticed that Skypes default theme clashes with Lucid’s dark theme. Personally, I think the new theme is kick-ass, but I was a bit annoyed that I couldn’t read any of the menus in Skype. I’m taking about the kind of menus you get when you right click on the Skype icon in your top taskbar. The dark text on dark background makes it unreadable.
Skype black on black menus
If you are seeing this same problem then here’s a solution for you.
Bring up the Skype Options (Ctrl+O)
Under “General” look for “Choose style”. It should be set to “Cleanlooks”.
Change the style to “Desktop Settings”. You will need to restart Skype.
Skype options menu
Once Skype restarts you should see light text on dark background. Which is much more readable!
Skype menus are much more readable now
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Awesome! Thank you for this. I noticed this a while ago and it just never got around to my “high priority” queue.
I also noticed that sometimes it would change to a light background with dark text. I haven’t yet figure out how I got it to do that though. But, now I don’t have to.
Thanks again!
Hi,
Didn’t worked for me. I have the modified version of Medibuntu Skype (2.1.0.47) and there is no option to set a theme…?
Removed Medibuntu Skype and installed Skype regular. Option appeared, problem solved:-)
Skype 2.1.0.47 doesn’t have the style option.
and the new version is still buggy,
for those who are using the 2.1.0.47 they can add following to command line of skype launcher.
–disable-cleanlooks
enjoy.
Thanks! This will make Skype 2.1.0.81 usable/readable under Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) AMD64.
Tks worked great for me, changed the launch command in Preferences -> Main Menu and now it works as it should.
Thanks – I had the same problem with cleanlooks and changed the style to windows and that fixed it! I have ubuntu 10.10 my next problem will be to get my built in webcam to work.