appres

Display X application resource settings

TLDR

Show resources for an application by class name
$ appres [XTerm]
Show resources with class and instance name
$ appres [XTerm] [xterm]
Show specific resource by filtering output
$ appres [Emacs] | grep [font]
Show resources for a specific widget path
$ appres [XTerm] [xterm] -xrm "*VT100*"

SYNOPSIS

appres [class [instance]] [-xrm resourcestring]

DESCRIPTION

appres displays X application resources. It queries the X Resource Manager database and shows resources that would be applied to a specified application based on its class and instance names.This is useful for debugging X11 application appearance and behavior, understanding which resources are being applied.

PARAMETERS

class

Application class name (typically capitalized)
instance
Application instance name (typically lowercase)
-xrm resourcestring
Add extra resource string for matching

INSTALL

sudo apt install x11-utils
sudo dnf install appres
sudo zypper install appres
nix profile install nixpkgs#appres

CAVEATS

Only applies to X11 applications using Xlib resources. Modern toolkit applications (GTK, Qt) may not use X resources. Output depends on resources defined in .Xresources or .Xdefaults.

HISTORY

appres is a standard X11 utility that has been part of the X Window System since the X11R4 release in 1989.

SEE ALSO

xrdb(1), xprop(1)