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Fcitx5 Customisation

About 1540 wordsAbout 5 min

BeginnerFcitx5InputRicing

2026-08-10

What is fcitx5?

fcitx5 is an input method framework — the layer between your keyboard and your apps that lets you type languages a physical keyboard cannot cover on its own, such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. You type letters, a small pop-up offers matching characters, and you pick one.

This is the one we use in tilling WM such as hyprland or niri

Quick append

Install the theme Ori-fcitx5 to ~/.local/share/fcitx5/themes

Paste the block below into ~/.config/fcitx5/conf/classicui.conf, then restart fcitx5.

~/.config/fcitx5/conf/classicui.conf
# Vertical Candidate List
Vertical Candidate List=False
# Use mouse wheel to go to prev or next page
WheelForPaging=True
# Font
Font="Noto Sans CJK SC 12"
# Menu Font
MenuFont="Noto Sans CJK SC 12"
# Tray Font
TrayFont="Noto Sans CJK SC Bold 10"
# Tray Label Outline Color
TrayOutlineColor=#000000
# Tray Label Text Color
TrayTextColor=#ffffff
# Prefer Text Icon
PreferTextIcon=False
# Show Layout Name In Icon
ShowLayoutNameInIcon=True
# Use input method language to display text
UseInputMethodLanguageToDisplayText=True
# Theme
Theme=OriDark
# Dark Theme
DarkTheme=OriDark
# Follow system light/dark color scheme
UseDarkTheme=False
# Follow system accent color if it is supported by theme and desktop
UseAccentColor=True
# Use Per Screen DPI on X11
PerScreenDPI=False
# Force font DPI on Wayland
ForceWaylandDPI=0
# Enable fractional scale under Wayland
EnableFractionalScale=True

Installing Fcitx5

Fedora
sudo dnf install fcitx5 fcitx5-configtool fcitx5-gtk fcitx5-qt fcitx5-autostart

fcitx5-gtk and fcitx5-qt pull in the GTK 3/4 and Qt 5/6 frontends. fcitx5-autostart launches fcitx5 when you log in, so you can skip the autostart step.

Fonts

The config in this guide asks for Noto Sans CJK SC. Without it the pop-up falls back to any font it can find, and Chinese characters often show as empty boxes.

Fedora
sudo dnf install google-noto-sans-cjk-fonts

Environment variables

On a Wayland session (the default on modern GNOME and KDE), apps reach fcitx5 through Wayland's own text-input protocol and no environment variables are needed. Try typing first — if it works, skip this section.

On X11, and for older apps running through XWayland, you point the toolkits at fcitx5 yourself. Create the file below:

~/.config/environment.d/fcitx5.conf
GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx
QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx
XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx

Log out and back in for these to take effect.

Installing the OriDark Theme

OriDark is a minial dark theme with rounded corners.

  • Create the themes folder

    mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fcitx5/themes

  • Download the theme

    git clone https://github.com/Reverier-Xu/Ori-fcitx5.git /tmp/ori-fcitx5

  • Copy both variants across

    cp -r /tmp/ori-fcitx5/OriDark /tmp/ori-fcitx5/OriLight ~/.local/share/fcitx5/themes/

    OriLight is the matching light variant. Copy it too so you can switch later.

Check that the theme arrived:

ls ~/.local/share/fcitx5/themes/

OriDark and OriLight appear alongside the built-in default and default-dark.

The folder name is the theme name. Theme=OriDark in the config below only works if the folder is spelled exactly OriDark, capital letters included.

The Appearance Config

Every visual setting lives in one file: ~/.config/fcitx5/conf/classicui.conf. classicui is the part of fcitx5 that draws the pop-up and the tray icon, so the theme, the fonts, and the scaling behaviour are set here.

Create the folder if this is a fresh install, then open the file in any text editor:

mkdir ~/.config/fcitx5/conf
nano ~/.config/fcitx5/conf/classicui.conf

Paste in the following:

~/.config/fcitx5/conf/classicui.conf
# Vertical Candidate List
Vertical Candidate List=False
# Use mouse wheel to go to prev or next page
WheelForPaging=True
# Font
Font="Noto Sans CJK SC 12"
# Menu Font
MenuFont="Noto Sans CJK SC 12"
# Tray Font
TrayFont="Noto Sans CJK SC Bold 10"
# Tray Label Outline Color
TrayOutlineColor=#000000
# Tray Label Text Color
TrayTextColor=#ffffff
# Prefer Text Icon
PreferTextIcon=False
# Show Layout Name In Icon
ShowLayoutNameInIcon=True
# Use input method language to display text
UseInputMethodLanguageToDisplayText=True
# Theme
Theme=OriDark
# Dark Theme
DarkTheme=OriDark
# Follow system light/dark color scheme
UseDarkTheme=False
# Follow system accent color if it is supported by theme and desktop
UseAccentColor=True
# Use Per Screen DPI on X11
PerScreenDPI=False
# Force font DPI on Wayland
ForceWaylandDPI=0
# Enable fractional scale under Wayland
EnableFractionalScale=True
Fcitx5 GUI

The settings app offers the same options:

fcitx5-configtool

Go to the Appearance tab and pick your theme and fonts there. The app writes the same classicui.conf, so both routes are equivalent — the file is just faster to copy between machines.

Setting Up Rime

An input method framework does not know any Chinese on its own. It needs an engine: the part that reads nihao and offers you 你好. rime is one such engine, and the most configurable one available.

Fedora
sudo dnf install fcitx5-rime brise

brise is Fedora's bundle of ready-made schemas, including the default Pinyin one.

With the engine installed, wire it into fcitx5:

  • Add Rime to your input methods

    Open the settings app:

    fcitx5-configtool

    On the Input Method tab, untick Only Show Current Language, find Rime in the list on the right, and click the arrow to move it across. Keep your normal keyboard layout at the top of the list and Rime below it.

    If the list on the left is empty, fcitx5 is not running. Run fcitx5 -d and reopen the settings app.

  • Try it out

Choosing your schemas

A schema is one way of typing — Pinyin, Jyutping, Wubi, and so on. rime ships with several but enables only a couple by default. You pick yours in a small settings file of your own.

Never edit rime's own files under /usr/share/rime-data/. Write a patch instead — a short file listing only what you want changed. rime merges it over its defaults, so your choices survive every update.

Create ~/.local/share/fcitx5/rime/default.custom.yaml:

mkdir ~/.local/share/fcitx5/rime
nano ~/.local/share/fcitx5/rime/default.custom.yaml
~/.local/share/fcitx5/rime/default.custom.yaml
patch:
  schema_list:
    - schema: luna_pinyin

luna_pinyin is Mandarin Pinyin, and rime starts with the first entry in the list. Add a line per schema you want, in the order you want them offered.

A schema name must match a filename in /usr/share/rime-data/ exactly — underscores, no hyphens. Get it wrong and rime quietly falls back to its defaults with no error.

To list what you already have:

ls /usr/share/rime-data/*.schema.yaml

Strip the .schema.yaml off any filename and you have a name for the list — bopomofo, cangjie5, wubi86, and so on.

Adding Cantonese

Cantonese Jyutping is the common extra, and the one place the distros disagree — both the package and the schema name differ.

Fedora

brise, installed earlier, already carries Cantonese, so no extra package is needed. Fedora calls it jyutping rather than jyut6ping3:

patch:
  schema_list:
    - schema: luna_pinyin
    - schema: jyutping

Deploying

rime compiles its configuration into a fast lookup format, and only when you ask. That step is a deploy, and it is required after every config change.

  • Trigger the deploy

    Right-click the fcitx5 tray icon and choose Rime → Deploy. It takes a few seconds — longer the first time, as the dictionaries are built from scratch.

  • Check that it worked

    ls ~/.local/share/fcitx5/rime/build/

    Compiled files such as luna_pinyin.schema.yaml appear. An empty folder means the deploy did not run.

  • Switch between schemas

    With Rime active, press F4 to open the schema menu and pick Pinyin or Jyutping. This is separate from Ctrl+Space, which switches between Rime and your plain keyboard layout.

Where your personal data lives

rime learns from you — the words you pick most often float to the top over time. That history sits in ~/.local/share/fcitx5/rime/ in files ending in .userdb, next to your default.custom.yaml.

Back up that whole folder and your typing habits move with you to a new machine. The build/ subfolder inside it is throwaway — the next deploy regenerates it.

Contributors

Lunear01

Changelog

8/10/26, 8:59 PM
View All Changelog
  • 85627-Added Fcitx Customization and Rime setup guideon

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