Themes

The themes directory in an extension should contain one or more theme files.

Each theme file should adhere to the JSON schema specified at https://zed.dev/schema/themes/v0.1.0.json.

See this blog post for more details about creating themes.

Theme JSON Structure

The structure of a Zed theme is defined in the Zed Theme JSON Schema.

A Zed theme consists of a Theme Family object including:

  • name: The name for the theme family
  • author: The name of the author of the theme family
  • themes: An array of Themes belonging to the theme family

The core components a Theme object include:

  1. Theme Metadata:

    • name: The name of the theme
    • appearance: Either "light" or "dark"

  2. Style Properties under the style, such as:

    • background: The main background color
    • foreground: The main text color
    • accent: The accent color used for highlighting and emphasis

  3. Syntax Highlighting:

    • syntax: An object containing color definitions for various syntax elements (e.g., keywords, strings, comments)

  4. UI Elements:

    • Colors for various UI components such as:
      • element.background: Background color for UI elements
      • border: Border colors for different states (normal, focused, selected)
      • text: Text colors for different states (normal, muted, accent)

  5. Editor-specific Colors:

    • Colors for editor-related elements such as:
      • editor.background: Editor background color
      • editor.gutter: Gutter colors
      • editor.line_number: Line number colors

  6. Terminal Colors:

    • ANSI color definitions for the integrated terminal

We recommend looking at our existing themes to get a more comprehensive idea of what can be styled.