Having the same problem, every other gtk app that uses system tray looks fine but Steam.
I wonder what's the problem.
It's not just the menu from the tray, if some game is launched that uses configuration menu, for example Unity engine games, it uses that same ugly white gtk theme.
Maybe that's not the theme that's shipping with steam that's causing this, but I don't know what it could be then. I'm getting this warning :
(steam:4747): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path:"adwaita",`

Maybe it's related to this issue ?

Found where's the problem !

For some reason steam doesn't recognize 'directiion' identifier in gtk themes, throwing this error :
error: unexpected identifierdirection', expected character }'

@jmauss , for arc-theme edit this file :
/usr/share/themes/Arc-Dark/gtk-2.0/main.rc

search for direction = LTR and direction = RTL

delete every line and that's it.

I will give it a shot when I get home, thanks!

This issue still exists. Will it be corrected for steam?
OS: Arch Linux
Arc Theme Version: 640.e4b0e99-1

Also seeing this on Mint 18.2 with Mint-Y-Dark theme.

Still a problem as of this date.

Yep, still the same issue (the one mentioned by @kajzersoze) in the latest GNOME 3.28 and default Adwaita theme. Please, fix this!

Somewhat amusing other projects got hit with this too, including vmware aparently . Though I can't find what part of X (be it GNOME specific or some other lib), was updated. It works as of at least gnome-themes-standard-3.22. Possibly because steam is still gtk2?

over 2 years since reported and still not fixed.

(steam:19482): Gtk-WARNING **: 20:48:59.733: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "adwaita",
/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/main.rc:733: error: unexpected identifier 'direction', expected character '}'

is the steam client going to get updated to handle direction = LTR and direction = RTL?

Seems like this was fixed in a recent update, tested with Adwaita and Greybird themes.

@orekix could you provide distro/de info?

I'm on the latest Steam Beta and the issue still occurs but used to work a while ago.

Mint 18.3
Cinnamon 3.6.7
GTK3 3.18.9-1ubuntu3.3
GTK2 2.24.30-1ubuntu1.16.04.2

this is under:

Arch Linux
Xfce 4.12
gtk3 3.22.30-1
gtk2 2.24.32-1

Still the same issue on the latest Steam client beta under Fedora 28.

GNOME 3.28.2 (with TopIcons Plus)
gtk3 3.22.30-1
gtk2 2.24.32-2

Issue exists under Void Linux as well. I have:

BSPWM (shouldn't affect anything)
gtk3 3.24.0
gtk2 2.24.32

It seems to work when i manually override the gtk2 theme, using the GTK2_RC_FILES variable, and set it to Industrial, but not with most other gtk2 themes.

Mint 19.1 64bit
Cinnamon 4.0.8
GTK3: 3.22.30-1ubuntu1
GTK2: 2.24.32-1ubuntu1

Had this problem on every DE, but it seems to work fine on KDE:

(K)Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
plasmashell 5.12.7

It seems to be working fine in Xmonad and Stalonetray.

In fact, it works fine with AppIndicator/KStatusNotifierItem.

Works correctly for me too, another KDE user. Updated Steam beta just yesterday, and again today.
Debian sid, Plasma 5.14.3, Breeze Dark theme for both KDE/GTK

I suppose it works out of the box in KDE because of KStatusNotifierItem.
But on GNOME for example you can use this extension: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/615/appindicator-support/

Just stumbled upon this problem (Xfce, Arch Linux). Looks like it appears only with particular GTK themes. Most of my themes work fine but the one I started using recently shows this problem. It is the Qogir theme: https://www.opendesktop.org/s/XFCE/p/1230631/

It's definitely something related to the bundled libgtk version. If I move/delete the symlink ~/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_32/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 the menu looks normal and steam appears to function properly.

~/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_32/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
This location is not even present on my Arch system. Just installed Steam and it has other ones but not anything libgtk.

You guys hit the nail on the head. Steam-runtime is preferring it's runtime libraries, as it should, and it's not inheriting the system theme. I think this must be somewhat deliberate considering the runtime dependencies are supposed to insure Steam can run regardless of the host's libraries. Adapting the host's theme could potentially hinder this if it's incompatible in any way. However, that's assuming steam-runtime is designed to be used as a debugging tool and not the default mode it's currently being shipped as.

Alternative library location:
.steam/bin32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_32/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0

Maybe add a startup flag to use the system default library for GTK in Steam-runtime? Steam-native worked very poorly for me the last time I tried it (regarding ingame performance) so Steam-runtime is the option of choice in my case for the time being but this particular library should not affect ingame performance so it would be great if here the native library could be used.

For people using Cinnamon, enabling support for indicators seems to fix this issue.

It's definitely something related to the bundled libgtk version. If I move/delete the symlink ~/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_32/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 the menu looks normal and steam appears to function properly.

Confirmed that removing (renaming) this file solves the issue for me. I wonder what it will cause though and why system settings are not taken into account. Seems like some build-type configuration to me.

Also, on my system (Arch Linux) it was located in ~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_32.

To solve this on Arch Linux, install lib32-libappindicator-gtk2. This solved my problem on xfce (it'll probably work on other DEs and WMs).

@mmt84: The theming is only present in steam-native, but not in steam-runtime even with lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 installed.

@Photon89: Well i'm not running steam-native. I'm running steam-runtime. I had native runtime installed at one time but i uninstalled it completely (using pacman -Rsn which should not leave any files behind). So right now i only have steam and lib32-libappindicator-gtk2. I'm executing steam by calling steam-runtime command.

@mmt84 That's weird, I have both installed and inly get the properly themed menu in steam-native... Running an up to date Arch (a rather old install though).

@Photon89 @mmt84 Can you confirm if your themes contain direction = RTL|LTR directives? (Also see https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4428#issuecomment-397420462)

In my case (with Ark-Dark) neither steam-runtime nor steam-native have correctly themed tray menues, but if I remove all lines containing LTR or RTL (with sed '/RTL\|LTR/d' -i /usr/share/themes/Arc-Dark/gtk-2.0/main.rc) then both work.

@gandalf3 I can confirm this, I guess: https://github.com/vinceliuice/Qogir-theme/search?q=rtl&unscoped_q=rtl

gandalf3: Here's my main.rc (Mint-Y theme): https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/blob/master/src/Mint-Y/gtk-2.0/main.rc

There are lines containing RTL and LTR. I don't know about gtk theming so i'm not sure.

Just need to install lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 and lib32-libappindicator-gtk3

I checked this on Linux mint 20
I'm unsure if a change in Linux mint fixed it or the included runtime recieved an update, but I no longer seem to be facing this problem on a near stock installation of Linux mint.

For the most part, it seems fixed.

To solve this on Arch Linux, install lib32-libappindicator-gtk2. This solved my problem on xfce (it'll probably work on other DEs and WMs).

Works for me under Arch Linux, XFCE, Nordic Theme, thank you very much.

Comment Link

I had the same problem but after installing steam-native-runtime the problem is solved

@Foro38 steam-native-runtime installs lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 as a dependency

I can confirm that lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 solves this issue for me, but why should I include this package requiring 30 dependencies as this happens only for steam? I think fixing this should be done by steam.

I can confirm that lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 solves this issue for me, but why should I include this package requiring 30 dependencies as this happens only for steam? I think fixing this should be done by steam.

lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 solved the issue until last week. Since the last steam update, it does not use the correct gtk theme anymore.

I can confirm that lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 solves this issue for me, but why should I include this package requiring 30 dependencies as this happens only for steam? I think fixing this should be done by steam.

lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 solved the issue until last week. Since the last steam update, it does not use the correct gtk theme anymore.

Is this still the case?

For me the issue is solved both in steam-native and in steam-runtime, not sure for how long already.

@Photon89 @mmt84 Can you confirm if your themes contain direction = RTL|LTR directives? (Also see [#4428 (comment)](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4428#issuecomment-397420462))

In my case (with Ark-Dark) neither steam-runtime nor steam-native have correctly themed tray menues, but if I remove all lines containing LTR or RTL (with sed '/RTL\|LTR/d' -i /usr/share/themes/Arc-Dark/gtk-2.0/main.rc) then both work.

For me the issue is solved after doing this. lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 and dependencies is not needed anymore.

@Photon89 @mmt84 Can you confirm if your themes contain direction = RTL|LTR directives? (Also see [#4428 (comment)](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4428#issuecomment-397420462))
In my case (with Ark-Dark) neither steam-runtime nor steam-native have correctly themed tray menues, but if I remove all lines containing LTR or RTL (with sed '/RTL\|LTR/d' -i /usr/share/themes/Arc-Dark/gtk-2.0/main.rc) then both work.

For me the issue is solved after doing this. lib32-libappindicator-gtk2 and dependencies is not needed anymore.

worked with Dracula theme thanks

Found this thread due to finding this issue in logs for Ubuntu 22.04, Adwaita theme when running steam:

/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/main.rc:733: error: unexpected identifier 'direction', expected character '}'
/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/hacks.rc:28: error: invalid string constant "normal_entry", expected valid string constant

Steam version: 1708985249
Steam API version: SteamClient021
Default GTK version 3.24.33

$ gtk-launch --version
3.24.33

Installed GTK packages:

$ apt list --installed libgtk*
Listing... Done
libgtk-3-0/jammy-updates,now 3.24.33-1ubuntu2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtk-3-bin/jammy-updates,now 3.24.33-1ubuntu2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtk-3-common/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 3.24.33-1ubuntu2 all [installed,automatic]
libgtk-4-1/jammy-updates,now 4.6.9+ds-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtk-4-bin/jammy-updates,now 4.6.9+ds-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtk-4-common/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,now 4.6.9+ds-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 all [installed,automatic]
libgtk2.0-0/jammy,now 2.24.33-2ubuntu2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtk2.0-bin/jammy,now 2.24.33-2ubuntu2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtk2.0-common/jammy,jammy,now 2.24.33-2ubuntu2 all [installed,automatic]
libgtk2.0-dev/jammy,now 2.24.33-2ubuntu2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtk3-perl/jammy,jammy,now 0.038-1 all [installed,automatic]
libgtkmm-3.0-1v5/jammy,now 3.24.5-1build1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtksourceview-4-0/jammy,now 4.8.3-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgtksourceview-4-common/jammy,jammy,now 4.8.3-1 all [installed,automatic]

The tray menu seems to correctly use the correct scheme (light/dark) depending on the system-wide setting though:

This is because the AppIndicator extension handles this differently. However the problem is still there.

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4428#issuecomment-216055465

This is unbelievable that a comment from 8 years ago partially works. It solved my problem when using the Tray Icon Reloaded extension on Ubuntu 23.10. Although the round corners of the tray menu are still missing, it looks better now.

I searched for direction[ ]+= LTR\n and direction[ ]+= RTL\n using regex and replaced them with empty strings in my case.

录屏 2024-03-01 13-55-34.webm

Linux Mint 21.3 the problem still exists.

Debian 12 problem still exists for me

Fedora 42 still works

• Steam uses gtk2 themes, so we have to install one:

sudo dnf install adwaita-gtk2-theme

• Edit the corresponding file to apply the theme

sed -i '/gtk-theme-name/d' ~/.gtkrc-2.0
sed -i '$a gtk-theme-name="Adwaita-dark"' ~/.gtkrc-2.0

/usr/share/themes/Adwaita-dark/gtk-2.0/main.rc:733: error: unexpected identifier 'direction', expected character '}'

• Delete "extra" lines from the theme file

sudo sed -E -i '/direction.*(LTR|RTL)/d' /usr/share/themes/Adwaita-dark/gtk-2.0/main.rc

• Replace the bg color (optional)

sed -i 's/#215d9c/#af00ff/' /usr/share/themes/Adwaita-dark/gtk-2.0/gtkrc

Steam uses GTK 2 themes.

@skafiend, issues/6953#issuecomment-803413183 appears to demonstrate otherwise.

Steam uses GTK 2 themes.

@skafiend, issues/6953#issuecomment-803413183 appears to demonstrate otherwise.

maybe it works different on Wayland. I don't know. I'm still using i3wm + X11, and it was the only way to fix the tray menu.

Fedora 43
Steam Beta Branch:  Steam Beta Update
Steam Version:  1781911235
Steam Client Build Date:  Sat, Jun 20, 2026 01:57 UTC -08:00
Steam Web Build Date:  Sat, Jun 20, 2026 01:08 UTC -08:00
Steam API Version:  SteamClient023

P.S.

From that thread https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4924#issuecomment-789324760

I could've been more clear and specified that Steam uses GTK2 for the menu, but it is what it is.

EDIT: steamui.so uses VGUI2 to render the window, not GTK2. 
GTK2 is only used for the libappindicator tray icon https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6953#issuecomment-803413183. 
So, vgui2_s.so should be updated to support Wayland.