Where Does LXAppearance Save Theme Choices?
LXAppearance keeps no config of its own: it writes GTK theme choices into settings.ini and gtkrc files.
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LXAppearance is an editor, not an owner: picking themes, icons, fonts and cursors writes ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini for GTK3 and ~/.gtkrc-2.0 for GTK2. There is no lxappearance.conf to back up.
That also explains clobbering. Hand edits inside those generated files vanish on the next Apply; the sanctioned escape hatch is the .mine include for GTK2 and direct settings.ini edits you never reopen in the GUI.
Where LXAppearance stores this, by platform
~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
Theme, icon, font, cursor picks as INI keys. GTK4 uses gtk-4.0/settings.ini instead, which older LXAppearance versions do not write.
Frequently asked questions
LXAppearance keeps resetting my tweaks. How do I persist them?
Edit ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini (and ~/.gtkrc-2.0.mine, included from gtkrc-2.0) by hand. LXAppearance overwrites its files on every apply, so direct edits are the only durable custom path.
Does applying a theme install it?
No. It only writes the theme name; engines and assets come from installed theme packages. A name pointing at a half-installed theme renders as fallback Raleigh.
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