Action for switching themes

[adiepenbrock]

Hi 👋,

I often find myself presenting content in the terminal. Generally, I use a dark theme, but depending on the environment (bad lighting, poor projectors, etc.), a dark theme can be hard to read. In those cases, I need to quickly switch to a white/light theme.

Currently, as far as I know, the only way to do this in Ghostty is by editing the config file and restarting the terminal, which is a bit cumbersome during a live presentation.

I would love to see a feature that allows quick switching between themes without restarting Ghostty or manually editing the config file.

I also heard via Twitter that @mitchellh is working on a command palette feature for Ghostty — this idea sounds amazing! Maybe quick theme switching could be integrated into the command palette as well? However, an action or something other to switch the theme would also be okay 😅

Thanks a lot for your great work — looking forward to what's coming next!

[rhodes-b]

Ghostty already supports switching between a light and dark theme from events generated from the os / desktop environment (note they dont actually need to be dark or light its just the option in the config you would mark them as)
https://ghostty.org/docs/features/theme#separate-light-and-dark-themes

Otherwise you have #2353

Or following the issue for the gui configuration (im not sure what this one is)

The command palette would likely use #2353 to change configuration options if it as added

or you can just make some script that lets you change the theme with escapes
#3457

note: actions with the ghostty cli would depend on #2353 (the command palette maybe not im not sure how that works)

Because of those reasons above I'd say that this feature will not get added as a action or into the command palette for the time being

[00-kat]

Maybe quick theme switching could be integrated into the command palette as well? However, an action or something other to switch the theme would also be okay 😅

Two things:

1. The command palette already exists in tip.
2. All keybinding actions are available from the command palette, so you can have both.

[pluiedev]

This was proposed by another person some time before. (Can't remember the discussion ID as it was a while ago.)

The main benefit that cannot be replicated through other means (see comment above) is that you can preview themes in real time, which is much more intuitive than ghostty +list-theme IMO. However there needs to be further design on how this would integrate as a command palette feature/keybind action.

[mitchellh]

I think there's a few interconnected features being discussed here...

First, I think having a keybind action like theme:<name> to change the theme to the given name is completely reasonable. The utility of this as a general keybind is low but read on...

Second, I think as part of the API discussion (the big one), invoking keybind actions is going to be a key part of that API. For example, the C API (libghostty) already has a general ghostty_surface_perform_action API that takes any keybind string and performs it. I could see our networked local API doing the same thing.

Third, as part of the API consumers, there is a discussion asking for ghostty +list-themes to be able to also change the theme without restart. It could use the above API.

Finally, command palette already generates its actions based on keybind actions. Right now they're hardcoded, but we could also switch that to a generator style model that yields a number of actions. The theme action could yield all the discovered themes.

This is a dump of my train of thought. I don't like creating one-off things, I prefer to build the proper building blocks so logic can be shared and behavior can be consistent. This seems like a way to do that and knock off a lot of birds with one stone.

[cryptocode]

I also heard via Twitter that @mitchellh is working on a command palette feature for Ghostty — this idea sounds amazing! Maybe quick theme switching could be integrated into the command palette as well? However, an action or something other to switch the theme would also be okay 😅

I had the same thought recently. Since some terminal apps look good under some themes, but not others, I tend to switch quite often. So I did a little hack locally to make it work, as shown below. As was discussed on Discord, the real picker should probably be a separate one for themes only, but it could reuse the command picker scaffolding.

This is basically what some modern editors/ide's do, and IMO it's very nice because whatever you have on screen is updated as you scroll through the themes.

themes.mov

[mattatusebutton]

So I did a little hack locally to make it work, as shown below.

Agree this is how it should be. Was this a simple local change?

[joisun]

How you did this bro, that's looks what I need

[codemedic]

It will be very useful to be able to switch between two selected themes. For example, I quite like the Matrix theme as a daily driver; its muted colours and minimal looks are the draw. When presenting something in a meeting though, others might struggle to read or differentiate colours, which necessitates the switch to a more conventional theme like Pro.

It would be kinda similar to the presentation mode in JetBrains IDEs. It will be nice to have a presentation mode theme and zoom level, and be able to switch (preferably just one window) to that and back using a toggle action.

[codemedic]

@mitchellh, sorry for the noise with #10070. I’m having trouble finding the instructions you mentioned regarding theme switching, even after looking through this discussion.

Could you please point me to those instructions or the recommended way to handle this? Thanks!

[rajayonin]

You could use the light/dark mode. According to the theme docs:

To specify a different theme for light and dark mode, use the following syntax: light:theme-name,dark:theme-name. For example: light:rose-pine-dawn,dark:rose-pine. Whitespace around all values are trimmed and order of light and dark does not matter. Both light and dark must be specified in this form. In this form, the theme used will be based on the current desktop environment theme.

Another way is updating the config with a script of some sorts, Omarchy does this by including a secondary config file, updating it, and resetting the terminal with killall -SIGUSR2 ghostty.

E.g.:

# ~/.config/ghostty/config
config-file = "~/.config/ghostty/dynamic-theme"

# ...

# ~/.config/ghostty/dynamic-theme
theme = Matrix

# change-theme.sh
sed -i "ghs/^theme = Matrix/theme = Pro/" ~/.config/ghostty/dynamic-theme
killall -SIGUSR2 ghostty  # reset (in Linux)

[rajayonin]

Also, the thing you mentioned about doing multiple actions with one keybind, you can use a chain keybind. It's currently on tip (future 1.3), and it's not mentioned in the tip docs yet, check PR #10015.

[codemedic]

Thanks @rajayonin; the config include + script works really well. ... and thanks for introducing Omarchy 👍🏽

[codemedic]

Here is what I ended up with; in case someone else finds it useful.

Within the config file (~/.config/ghostty/config)

# The default theme
theme = Matrix

# Set dynamic theme (if available)
config-file = ?./dynamic-theme

The script below can be invoked to toggle between Matrix and Pro themes.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

readonly dynamic_theme_file="$HOME/.config/ghostty/dynamic-theme"
readonly default_theme=Matrix
readonly alternate_theme=Pro

set_theme() {
	echo "theme = $1" >"$dynamic_theme_file"
	killall -SIGUSR2 ghostty # reset (in Linux)
}

if ! current_theme=$(awk -F ' = ' '/^theme =/ {print $2}' "$dynamic_theme_file" 2>/dev/null); then
	echo "Dynamic theme file not found; creating with alternate theme."
	set_theme "$alternate_theme"
	exit 0
fi

if [ "$current_theme" == "$default_theme" ]; then
	set_theme "$alternate_theme"
else
	set_theme "$default_theme"
fi

Set up a global keybinding within your desktop environment, to invoke the above script, for ease of use.

[cschar]

For MacOS,
threw together a fix so if i type c1/c2/c3... etc.. it switches between diff configs

### Ghostty color theme switcher
function switch_ghostty_theme() {
    local theme_num=$1
    local theme_file="$DOTFILES_ROOT/config/ghostty/theme${theme_num}.conf"
    local ghostty_config_dir="${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/ghostty"
    local config_file="$ghostty_config_dir/config"

    # Create ghostty config directory if it doesn't exist
    mkdir -p "$ghostty_config_dir"

    if [ -f "$theme_file" ]; then
        cp "$theme_file" "$config_file"
        echo "Switched to Ghostty theme ${theme_num}"
        echo 'reloading theme with apple script cmd+shift+,'
        # Auto-reload Ghostty config on macOS
        osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "," using {command down, shift down}' 2>/dev/null
    else
        echo "Theme file not found: $theme_file"
    fi
}

alias c1='switch_ghostty_theme 1'
alias c2='switch_ghostty_theme 2'
alias c3='switch_ghostty_theme 3'
alias c4='switch_ghostty_theme 4'
alias c5='switch_ghostty_theme 5'

then in each config/ghostty/theme<N>.conf have a custom conf

for example 'c3' goes a bit blue with an ocean background

# Blue Dolphin Theme with Background at /Users/YOUR_NAME/mydotfilesrepo/config/ghostty/theme3.conf
theme = Blue Dolphin

# Background image settings
background-image = /Users/YOUR_NAME/mydotfilesrepo/config/ghostty/backgrounds/theme3.png
background-image-opacity = 0.3
background-image-fit = cover
background-image-position = center

[flyerAI2025]

For anyone looking for a workaround today — I made ghostty-themes, a single zsh script that lets you browse and switch themes interactively with fzf. Themes apply in real-time as you navigate, with an accurate code preview matching +list-themes. Enter to save, Esc to restore.

More details in my comment on #8145.