bsetroot(1)

bsetroot1

Blackbox utility to change root window appearance

Usage

bsetroot -help

bsetroot [-display display] -solid color

bsetroot [-display display] -mod x y -fg color -bg color

bsetroot [-display display] -gradient texture -from color -to color

Overview

Bsetroot is a utility that can control the appearance of the root window in three ways: Either give it a solid color, or write a two color modula pattern to it, or render a gradient texture, based on two different colors.

Bsetroot resembles xsetroot(1) in this functionality but it supports multiple screen displays, and gradient textures the same way as Blackbox does. It doesn't handle cursors etc. Bsetroot is part of the Blackbox package.

Options

Bsetroot operates in three ways, you must choose one of the first 3 options:

-solid color

Sets the root window to specified color.

-mod x y

Creates a modula pattern. You must specify -bg and -fg colors.

-gradient texturestring

Renders the specified texture string to the root window. For possible texture strings, please refer to blackbox(1). You must also specify both a -from and a -to color.

-display display

Tells Bsetroot to connect to the specified display.

-bg, -background color

Background color. Needed for -mod patterns.

-fg, -foreground color

Foreground color. Needed for -mod patterns.

-from color

Start color for rendering textures. Needed for -gradient operation mode.

-to color

Ending color for rendering textures. Needed for -gradient operation mode.

-help

Prints version info and short help text.

Releases

14 releases since Debian 2.2 (Potato); the text changed 3 times.

  1. 2.2
  2. 3.0
  3. 3.1–13
  4. Arch

-background since Debian 3.0 (Woody); -bg since Debian 3.0 (Woody); -fg since Debian 3.0 (Woody); -foreground since Debian 3.0 (Woody); -help since Debian 3.0 (Woody).

Author

Bsetroot is written and maintained by Brad Hughes ([email protected]) and Jeff Raven ([email protected]).

From blackbox 0.77-3 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.