Themes: Ideas, Feedback, Accessibility, Discussion #6657
Replies: 40 comments 47 replies
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One thing I want for Zed themes in the future is to be able to dynamically shift the colors of a theme. For example: Higher/lower contrast or saturation modes. I'd love to eventually ship something like a colorblind filter (shift hue/saturation based on color blindness type – Example) Something like this would be a ways off though. |
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Yes, so many themes are really washed out. I'm less interested in something automated to change those things and much more excited by the ability to quickly and easy fork an existing theme and tweak it to my preferences. I don't even care if it's a gui-ish thing to edit theme, just that it's fast and easy to fork/tweak the colors. But I definitely won't say no to a decent gui. :-) |
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Big +1 to support the different types of color blindness. I think that would be very helpful during collaboration. |
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As someone with Deuteranomaly, I would love a theme and/or a way to adjust themes to improve visibility. All the themes currently look like they've faded from being in the sun too long. |
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could an experimental feature be added for custom themes following the same theme formatting and syntax, etc. that is already used for the current themes that we want to use.. so maybe we can make and break and tinker with it to help... i know there is no time table yet for custom themes.. i know it would be extremely experimental yet maybe some of us could use it if u implemented something basic so we can do some of the legwork in our usual day to day as i have a feeling some of us will want to tinker anyways based on what i have read so far.. although.. we wouldn't have any support on it because until u got around to it we would be sort of data gathering and sharing as we learn to help.. idk.. random idea... maybe this is beneficial?.. |
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I'd love to see the barrier of entry to theming be lower than it often is so that people can easily create and share themes. |
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Yeah we have lots of plans™️ around this, but there is a lot to consider, and we have to sequence priorities. These are some old designs that explore this idea:
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If/when you go down that rabbit hole, please do allow for the settings of the editor chrome to be separate/separable from the settings for the editing pieces. |
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can some of us be able to play with those settings while u are sequencing said priorities.. maybe we can help during?.. unless u are talking about having to hard code the GUI with it... to hold us off until then maybe a css based basic sytax for theme switching with a link within or something or having a page on the git here with the themes available.. at first i get there may be more legwork.. i loved Atom myself and really wanna see this project take off! maybe this helps? |
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wow, i really like this, it should be great to have, good luck |
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I would like to request the option to set different themes for light/dark system preferences. My system theme preference changes throughout the day and I really appreciate it if my editor changes automatically with it. |
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Yes! I manually do this at least twice everyday. |
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or even a basic line of code to enable auto switching on a variable timer based on preferred personal input, that could be configured within the configuration file possibly... if that is helpful for the above idea to help streamline the thought and idea to practical application for real time usage.. had that thought.. maybe this helps the devs?.. |
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This isn't ready yet, but the system we are working on now will help enable this! |
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Aww, I was hoping to be able to create my own theme. Just exposing the underlying theme format is fine (I don't need a whole UI), but it's a bit sad to have themes without customization. Even Fleet has only light/dark, but at least you can change it. To be honest, I'm not quite sure why this is something that I think is indispensable. |
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it is mentioned that they are working on custom themes yet there is no time table.. |
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@LL-Program, please avoid spamming Zed community platforms with your promotional material. |
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i found it! okay the autosave feature with milliseconds forces auto indenting and makes it extremely painful to add lines to config file, may be a bug within the coded formula on back end?.. or just me... essentially by switching auto save to off the issue is resolved, yet that seems to suggest the autosave feature may be a tad buggy on the millisecond timer... TL::DR seems to cause the file to force indent for proper syntax which i get for the config file then does the said autosave.. .. anyone else have issue?.. anyone know of solution?.. going to do auto save feature last i suppose on config file in meantime.. will update when i make it to my website i am coding to practice in once configured to see if issue persists beyond the config file itself. |
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another solution.. on_focus_change prevent said issue.. so there is that.. hope that helps devs on the timer setting for the autosave feature via milliseconds.. so maybe add an else statement to the variable on back end so when the auto save is done via timer it doesnt auto indent like the other variables then it wont be such a headache and feel pretty much useless unless given a ridiculous amount of time to save tho I forsee that even that would be an issue because u may be lines of code in and then it autosaves in the window and ur work is scrubbed at least on the line your working on... maybe this helps.? |
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I'm not sure what this has to do with themes. You probably will have better luck posting this as a separate discussion or issue. |
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I'm aware it may be controversial, but I believe the best text editors are the ones that allow users to configure window transparency. I am not talking about cosmetic blurs, which IMHO are worthless wastes of CPU cycles. What I'm talking about is the main window to have a background view with an editable alpha level. For Macs, TextMate up to version 2.0-rc.13 enabled this, but it was removed in later versions. As I understand it, the feature was removed because the methods it implemented were deprecated or removed in more modern Mac SDKs. iTerm enables this feature still, and also does it very, very well. It's been on my TODO to look into exactly how iTerm does it. Mac's native Terminal.app also implements configurable window transparency. It's an essential feature to me, and I cannot be alone. It's essential because laptop screen space is limited, and if you find yourself drafting documents, then it's an incredible time-saver to have different versions pulled up you can re-write without copy-pasting or breaking your stride to At a high design level, it makes sense to implement window transparency as theme that users can enable and tweak, if they like. |
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Yep, so many of these features (and, frankly, underlying philosophy) are why I'm still using Emacs after multiple decades. |
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Coming from iTerm and neovim, I also miss the opportunity to watch my videos or series at the same time that I code in one screen :D |
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You can use the below to customise Zed's background: |
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Before I had access to the beta, I read the docs, as such I started to associate the theme used there with zed. I appreciate it's not the riot of color found in most themes. I don't see it in the list of experimental themes (Andromeda is close). I think the below theme is a good addition to the default set: |
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yeah it's hard to find a balance between. I like less highlighting as well. Nuisance: |
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I also vote for a theme with higher contrast. The existing ones (especially the light themes) look a bit washed out and dull. A light theme with slightly higher contrast would greatly help me in using Zed daily at work. I created a separate discussion about this here : https://github.com/zed-industries/feedback/discussions/841 . |
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I think to start with, having the option to edit a CSS file of sorts where we can enter the primary set of colors This would allow basic users to generate a new theme by only needing to apply their colors to one place. I created a retro Green theme for Warp by just needing to select the right shades of green... |
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If you will go with a proper UI option, I think so far from the screenshots shared, this is the most useful and appealing way to do it. |
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Suggestion: More padding or spacing between the 'enable night shift" and the color squares above it |
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Question: This is probably a dumb question, but is there a list of all themes in Zed? I checked the Themes and Configuration tabs here... Suggestion: In the themes tab of https://zed.dev/docs/configuration/configuring-zed there should be a table of built-in Zed themes and maybe some featured community themes. |
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I’d assumed that (VSCode has same settings) but wasn’t sure; I didn’t want to mess anything up and have to reinstall 😅 Like you said, I think it’d be helpful to add that to the Command Palette under the theme selector option. |
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Yeah, it should be there, that might be a bug. I opened an issue for it. |
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This is crucial, please put this in the docs ASAP. cc @iamnbutler |
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@khairulhaaziq +1 |
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Apologies, I wasn't aware finding themes was an issue people were having. There is an update to the docs deploying now that should explain clearly the ways of picking a theme! |
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I think CLion / IntelliJ have the gold standard for theme setup. It’s stack based. You have General at the bottom, then "Language Defaults" (universal language concepts like keyword, string, number, and so on without any specifics), and finally Language specific things on top (letting you make customizations for syntax that isn't universally applicable). You can edit the scheme via the gui and you get a preview of the theme in the context you’re working with. Visual Studio might be an example of the absolute worst way to theme. |
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From what you’ve described, that sounds amazing!!!! I think Visual Studio Code has a decent theming system - live previews of themes in a web editor. Not to mention a third party web app for making themes! 😀 |
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I guess I should be more clear that I was referring to Visual Studio proper (or whatever we're saying to differentiate it from Code and |
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Oh no I understood you were referring to the .NET IDE Visual Studio. From what I’ve seen of it, I agree with you; the theming sucks |
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The downside to IntelliJ is that it's very hard to figure out how to customise non-editor areas: tree views, gutters etc. I'd split code and non-code in a theme, but have both of them as stacks as you described. |
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I'm not familiar with CLion / IntelliJ setup (could you post a screenshot for reference @photex?), but I wonder if I'm imagining something similiar... For me, a palette of tones in a row of squares doesn't afford much context about the application of a theme. I thought about presenting a "vertical slice" of directories, files, git status, editor windows, code blocks, syntax highlights, linting, with an editor window modal to allow real-time, contextual editing of most contexts within a single screen. Not unlike the VSCode live preview of themes, but with opportunity for realtime modification on top. |
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Would love to create or edit themes — just exposing the API would be enough while y'all figure out how to innovate in this area |
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Not the best place to ask but considering they gone for a completely native solution, with a custom renderer using rust it's probably not any time soon |
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I would love to see something like this:
In Sublime Text, I have a plugin installed that handles color coding based on string length. This is very beneficial to how my brain works. The plugin can be fount at: https://github.com/mhenrixon/Sublime-Colorcoder Curious if you'd be open to such a thing? |
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finding it hard to customize the terminal text color to make it more readable like in VS Code's theme of Catppuccin The highlighted line in Zed (right side) is hard to read with the light blue as the background
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other difficult parameters to identify is the color of the correctly searched & highlighted text in the editor. can't seem to find the 'lightBlue' color in
in vscode's theming there are clear parameters for this
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Where can I find the specs for the syntax object? At "syntax": {
"description": "The styles for syntax nodes.",
"default": {},
"type": "object",
"additionalProperties": {
"$ref": "#/definitions/HighlightStyleContent"
}
},I have tried
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I think a good addition to a theme generator workflow is to have a dummy file or a UI that shows you all the different parts of the selected theme. I really like on zed how I can open There are many aspects to a theme that are difficult to try out or test because they are not that common of an occurrence, such as Having a file, or even better, a piece of UI on a panel which shows you how different lines on your theme JSON affects how your editor looks would be a great UX to create your own themes. |
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Is there any guide on how to develop new themes in zed? 🤔 I mean step by step? |
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playing with an imported vscode theme via the zed tool (zed left, vscode right) 
seems like vscode has more granular awareness of language syntax. see |
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Is there any ability to color folders and files yet? Based on whether they've changed, are open etc. |
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🟢 Brings the nostalgic essence of vintage green phosphor monitors to your Zed editor. This theme is crafted to offer a unique and immersive visual experience, capturing the original charm of early computing displays. Available in both dark and light versions, the Green Monochrome Monitor Theme transforms your coding environment with its distinct green-on-black and green-on-light-green aesthetics. https://github.com/Takk8IS/green-monochrome-monitor-theme-for-zed Green Monochrome Monitor Dark Theme Green Monochrome Monitor Light Theme Experience the originality and unique aesthetics of the Green Monochrome Monitor Theme and take your coding journey back to the era of early computing displays. |
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this is not the place to submit themes, you can submit them over here |
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Thank you very much for referring me to the appropriate place. =) |
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It'd be great if I could set/persist different themes per project, so I could more easily distinguish between the active window and get context quickly. (Sorry if this isn't the correct discussion for it or if it's already possible today) |
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Summercamp light theme, please! This is pretty much anecdotal, but I think Summercamp is one the most original editor themes I've seen in the last couple of years. And as far as I'm aware, Summercamp is the only original Zed theme that was successfully ported to VSCode: https://github.com/csalmeida/summercamp-vscode-theme With the introduction of default light theme in the stable release, it would be great to see a potential light version of it. As much as I think One Light and Dark are fine for default themes, they simply lack the originality that Zed provides. |
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Options I'd like in theme.json: Syntax nodes:
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Three things from me:
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part of the problem for your second and third points is that the tokenization of things seems to vary greatly from grammar to grammar for example, the bright purple italics in this screenshot is for I've seen a lot of other variations from language to language, Lua for example shows |
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Yeah, that is why they would be nice. The second to figure this out, and the third to solve it. |
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Something that I think would greatly improve accessibility and readability is the ability to define a foreground color for selected text, matches and highlighted text. Currently, we are limited to using very subtle colors for highlighting text, which is counterintuitive for a highlight system IMO, and can results in readability issues. Hard to read text in search results: Selecting a text can in some cases make it harder to read: Matching brackets are almost unnoticeable: Suggested solutionExpose an optional foreground color property for each of the different match / highlight / selection styles: "search.match_background": "#dfc184ff",
+ "search.match_foreground": "#282c34ff",
"editor.document_highlight.read_background": "#dfc184ff",
+ "editor.document_highlight.read_foreground": "#282c34ff",
"editor.document_highlight.write_background": "#dfc184ff",
+ "editor.document_highlight.write_foreground": "#282c34ff",
"players": [
{
"cursor": "#5ac1feff",
"background": "#5ac1feff",
"selection": "#dfc184ff"
+ "selection_foreground": "#282c34ff"
}
],By setting high-contrast background and foreground colors to these properties, we make sure the text will alway be readable in all scenarios: 
(I already created an issue before stumbling on this discussion about this here: #17890) |
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I don't know if this is the right place to discuss but given that fonts could be considered as part of the themes group I'll post it here. I think that the font on the diagnostic hover (triggered by |
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is it possible to modify the color of nested object properties? |
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Just wanted to address poor (non-ai) completion quality, the order is random every time I start typing the word |
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and others
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Starting a discussion to share and get feedback on all things themes.
The docs page for themes can be found here: docs.zed.dev/configuration/themes
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