A new KDE icon theme is bringing a sprinkle of Samsung Experience to the Plasma desktop.

The Dex icon theme for KDE draws inspiration from the icons used on the Samsung Galaxy S8.

Like its source Dex uses a “squircle” shape for the majority of its app icons. This reminds me (a little) of the Ubuntu Suru icon theme.

But where Suru uses its container to house playful, intricate icon designs the Dex icon theme uses high contrast logos and wireframe glyphs.

The result is a cleaner, starker look that’s is still colorful but also understated:

Even “busy icons” like Blender and Chrome look great, though the strongest icons (visually speaking) are those which use wireframe outlines (e.g., Dolphin, Settings) or a high contrast design (e.g, VLC, Firefox).

Unframed wire outlines are used for many system items and actions, including session buttons, navigation controls. Rather than break the overall aesthetic I find lends them a greater visual emphasis.

The Dex icon set is free. It’s designed for KDE Plasma 5 (so won’t necessarily work on GTK based desktop) and is available to download from the KDE Store:

Dex Icon theme for KDE

To install icon themes in KDE Plasma you need to extract the archive you download, and then move the named folder inside to ~/.local/share/icons. Note: you may need to toggle hidden files on in Dolphin (or whichever file manager you use) to be able to see this folder.

To change icon theme on KDE Plasma open System Settings > Appearance > Icons and select the icon theme you want from the list.

Bonus: Matching Conky

The Dex icon theme’s author has also created a simple clock theme widget for Conky inspired by the clock widget in the Samsung Experience. It’s called Conky Dex (pictured in the first image) and is available on GNOME Look.