Changing Gnome Panel Font Color

Sometimes we want to create or change the Gnome panel background color, but when we use a dark or black background is quite dificult to see the fonts at the main menu and clock for example. To solve this problem, we can simple change the panel font colors directly editing the .gtkrc-2.0 file in our home directory:

luizxx@Revy ~ $ vi .gtkrc-2.0

Then add the following lines to your file:

style “modpanel”
{
fg[NORMAL] = “#FFFFFF”
}
widget “*PanelWidget*” style “modpanel”
widget “*PanelApplet*” style “modpanel”
widget “*fast-user-switch-applet*” style “modpanel”

Now you can logout and logon to activate the changes, or you can simply reload the panel with:

luizxx@Revy ~ $ killall gnome-panel

Note that you can change the fg[NORMAL] value to any color you want to use, from #000000 to #FFFFFF.