Customizing Inkscape

Change keyboards shortcuts

Shortcuts

In Edit > Preferences > Interface > Keyboard Shortcuts

you can either select one of the predefined keymaps, or you can define your own keyboard shortcuts and save them. The shortcuts that you change will be saved in the file default.xml in your user Inkscape preferences' "keys" directory.

You can also manually edit the file <Inkscape install directory>/share/keys/default.xml, or manually add a custom keys/default.xml in the user Inkscape preferences directory to define new shortcuts or remap (override) shortcuts from the shared keymap file.

In order to share the same shortcuts as other softwares, following configuration files are shipped with Inkscape (look at the <Inkscape install directory>/share/keys/ folder):

You can find a list of the available keymaps either in the Inkscape preferences, in the dropdown, or in the Inkscape git repository.

Modifier keys

Edit > Preferences > Interface > Keyboard Shortcuts > Modifiers

Change the user interface

Change icons

Edit > Preferences > Interface > Icon theme

Inkscape looks them up by name from the system, in the "normal" way, as described by the Freedesktop standard.

To add your own, you can save SVG (or PNG) files with the appropriate names into your <Inkscape install directory>/share/icons/ folder.

Change the Interface Theme

Edit > Preferences > Interface > Theme

In GTK, a theme is defined in a .css file. You can find an example under <Inkscape install directory>/share/inkscape/themes/Minwaita-Inkscape/.

You can add your own theme, built and structured like the example theme, into your user preferences' 'themes' directory. It will then become available in the preferences.

Changing Colors of Canvas Handles

You can do that by copying the file node-handles.css from <Inkscape install directory>/share/inkscape/ui/ to the folder ui in your user preferences directory and then editing the copied file (since Inkscape 1.4).

Changing Menus

You can do that by copying the file menus.ui from <Inkscape install directory>/share/inkscape/ui/ to the folder ui in your user preferences directory and then editing the copied file.

Changing Toolbars

Some changes can be done in Edit > Preferences > Interface > Toolbars

If you want custom buttons in your menus, or remove buttons from them, you can do that by copying the corresponding file toolbar-*.ui from <Inkscape install directory>/share/inkscape/ui/ to the folder ui in your user preferences directory and then editing the copied file.

You can use any action that does not require user input as a command.