ArcSkin gives QGIS an interface inspired by ArcGIS Pro

ArcSkin gives QGIS an interface inspired by ArcGIS Pro: a ribbon, Pro-style panes, view tabs above the map, Pro's map status bar, light flat icons for the whole of QGIS, Pro's default symbology and colour ramps. Everything is switched on with one click and fully reverted with the next one.

It is meant for people who know ArcGIS Pro and want to feel at home in QGIS, for training rooms that teach both, and for organisations moving from Esri to QGIS.

ArcSkin is an independent open source project. It is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by Esri. ArcGIS and ArcGIS Pro are trademarks of Esri.

Pro's toolbar (Field: Add, Calculate | Selection: Select By Attributes, Zoom To, Switch, Clear, Delete, Copy) and footer (show all or selected records, first and last record, "N of M selected", filters, zoom slider, refresh).

QGIS 4.x (Qt 6), the main platform

QGIS 3.40 or newer (Qt 5)

Installation

Download arcskin-<version>.zip from the releases.

In QGIS open Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins… → Install from ZIP, choose the file and click Install Plugin.

The ArcSkin look is applied as soon as the plugin is installed. Switching takes a few seconds; a progress box shows the work.

What you want How

Switch the look off for now Blue Project button → ArcSkin look

Switch it on again Plugins → ArcSkin → ArcSkin look (QGIS menu bar)

Keep plain QGIS after restarting Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins… → Installed, untick ArcSkin

Remove the plugin Same dialog, select ArcSkin, Uninstall Plugin

While the plugin is active, ArcSkin is switched on at every QGIS start.

Switching the look off restores QGIS as it was: toolbars, panes and their positions, the UI theme, icons, the status bar, project styles and the colour ramps added to the QGIS style. Your projects are not changed by switching.

The first time ArcSkin is switched on, most icons change at once. Layer icons in Contents and Catalog follow after a QGIS restart; a message says so.

demo/arcskin_demo.qgz is a world map in the Equal Earth projection: countries coloured by climate zone, country names, disputed borders and a raster of the distance from the coast, with two extra map views (Climate zones, Distance from coast) and a print layout. The data come from Natural Earth (public domain).

QGIS keeps one layer tree per project, so the drawing order is shared by all view tabs; each tab has its own layer visibility (a QGIS map theme) and extent.

3D views and print layouts open in their own windows; their tabs bring them to the front.

The icon theme is installed into QGIS's resources/themes folder when it is writable, because QGIS 4 only reads UI themes from there.

Development

arcskin/ the plugin (packed into the ZIP) plugin.py on / off switch, style sheet, progress box util.py tr(), Pro icons, undo log of all changes (Changes) ribbon.py ribbon, title row, Project menu panes.py Contents, Catalog, Geoprocessing, Symbology panes contents_views.py List By views, raster legend, context menu icons mapview.py view tabs, map status bar coords.py coordinate formats of the status bar dialogs.py attribute table, Pro icons in other windows symbology.py default symbols, label font, colour ramps icon_theme.py QGIS icon theme basemaps.py basemap gallery resources/ icons, style sheets, generated icon theme, colour ramps i18n/ translations (.ts sources) scripts/ package.py builds dist/arcskin-<version>.zip i18n.py update .ts files from the code, compile .qm files build_icon_theme.py generates the QGIS icon theme (run with python-qgis) build_demo.py builds the demo project (QGIS Python console) demo/ demo project and data docs/images/ screenshots

Every change ArcSkin makes to QGIS goes through util.Changes, which records how to undo it; switching off replays that log backwards.

For development, link the plugin folder into your QGIS profile (PowerShell as administrator, or with Windows developer mode on):

New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "$env:APPDATA\QGIS\QGIS4\profiles\default\python\plugins\arcskin" -Target "$PWD\arcskin"

Tests. tests/ holds unit tests that need no QGIS window: coordinate formats, the undo log, the style sheet and icon references, default symbols and colour ramps, translations and metadata. Run them with QGIS's Python from the repository root (they also run in CI on QGIS 3.44 and the latest release):

C:\OSGeo4W\bin\python-qgis.bat -m unittest discover -s tests -t . -v

tests/smoke_in_qgis.py is a smoke test for a running QGIS with ArcSkin on: run it from the Python console and it switches the look off and on, checking that QGIS comes back as it was and that the skin is complete. It also lists any tool of QGIS's core toolbars that no ribbon button or drop-down reaches (the label, raster, annotation, GPS and mesh toolbars are not on the ribbon yet).

Translations. Texts in the code are English and go through tr("..."). After changing them run python scripts/i18n.py update, translate the new entries in arcskin/i18n/arcskin_pl.ts (Qt Linguist or a text editor) and the .qm files are compiled when packaging. For a new language, add an empty arcskin/i18n/arcskin_<code>.ts and run update.

Packaging and releases. python scripts/package.py writes dist/arcskin-<version>.zip. For a release, raise version in arcskin/metadata.txt, tag the commit v<version> and push the tag; GitHub Actions builds the ZIP and attaches it to the release.

ArcSkin is licensed under the GPL-2.0-or-later, see LICENSE. The icon theme is derived from QGIS's own icons (GPL-2.0-or-later). Demo data: Natural Earth (public domain). Basemaps: © OpenStreetMap contributors, OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA), CARTO, Sentinel-2 cloudless by EOX IT Services GmbH (CC BY 4.0).