GitHub - envirosolutionspl/arcskin: QGIS plugin that gives QGIS an ArcGIS Pro-inspired interface: ribbon, Pro-style panes, map view tabs, status bar, light flat icons, default symbology and colour ramps. One click on, one click off. Not affiliated with Esri.

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.

Features

Ribbon and title row

Ribbon with Map, Insert, Analysis, View, Edit, Share, Help and Add-ins tabs built from QGIS's own tools, with Pro's captions and grouping. Plugin toolbars appear on Add-ins.
Nothing of QGIS is out of reach: buttons drop down QGIS's own menus (Analysis → Tools: Vector, Raster, Database, Web, Mesh; View → Panes with every panel, plugin ones too; Toolbars; Insert → Decorations; Add Data, New Layer, Select, Help, Plugins), so items that plugins add to them show up as well.
Edit tab with all of QGIS's editing tools: digitizing techniques (curves, stream, Bézier, NURBS), shapes (circle, ellipse, rectangle, regular polygon), the advanced digitizing tools (parts, rings, simplify, offset, fillet, trim/extend, reverse, split parts, merge attributes), the Advanced Digitizing panel and every snapping option (types, layers, tracing, topological editing, intersections, self-snapping, avoid overlap).
In a window narrower than a tab, the tab scrolls sideways.
Blue Project button with project commands, recent projects, import/export, settings, the complete QGIS menu and the ArcSkin switch.
Title row with a Quick Access Toolbar, the project name and QGIS's search box centred at the top (like Pro's Command Search).
Basemap gallery: Topographic (OpenTopoMap), OpenStreetMap, Imagery (Sentinel-2 cloudless), Light and Dark Gray Canvas (CARTO). Only worldwide services.

Panes

Contents with a layer search box and filter, Pro's List By views (drawing order, data source, selection, editing, snapping, labeling) and Pro-style raster legends ("Value", High / Low).
Catalog with Project, Favorites and All tabs, Geoprocessing with toolboxes and Find Tools, Symbology with Pro page icons.
The active pane gets Pro's blue title and frame; View → Reset Panes restores the mapping, editing or geoprocessing layout.

Map view

View tabs above the map. Extra 2D map views are shown in the main map area, one at a time: each tab has its own map theme and extent, and the Contents pane edits the layers of the tab you are on. 3D views and print layouts get tabs too.
Pro's status bar under the map: editable scale, snapping / grid / constraints, coordinates you can type in (decimal degrees, DMS, DDM, MGRS, US National Grid, UTM and linear units), the coordinate system, the number of selected features (click to zoom to them), clear selection, pause drawing and refresh.
Selected features in Pro's cyan, on the map and in the attribute table.

Attribute table

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).

Symbology and styling

New layers get Pro's defaults: pastel colours from Pro's "Basic Random" palette, 0.7 pt grey outlines, 1 pt lines, 4 pt circle markers.
New labels use Pro's default text symbol (Tahoma 10 pt, black).
About 100 of Pro's colour ramps (sequential, diverging, analytical such as elevation, slope, aspect and precipitation, spectrum and qualitative) are added to the QGIS style with the tag ArcSkin, for classifying vectors and stretching rasters.

Look and feel

Light, flat theme with Segoe UI and Pro-style check boxes, radio buttons, lists and trees.
Every QGIS icon redrawn in Pro's light, flat style, plus hand-drawn icons for tools and layer types.
English interface, Polish translation.

Requirements

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.

Turning the look on and off

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 project

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).

Good to know

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.

Credits and licence

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).