Themes and Appearance

Themes and Appearance

Getman ships seven full visual themes, each with light/dark and a density toggle. Change them in Settings or via the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl+K). Theme changes apply instantly (no restart).

Themes

Theme (picker label)	Vibe
CLASSIC (default)	Calm, native desktop-tool look — neutral gray surfaces, hairline borders, soft small radii, tight padding, and a single muted-indigo accent. In the spirit of Postman/Bruno.
BRUTALIST	Thick borders, hard shadows, uppercase display type
EDITORIAL	Quieter, long-form reading aesthetic
ARCANE QUEST	Tongue-in-cheek fantasy RPG skin
DRACULA	The popular dark palette — clean, flat, purple-and-pink accents
LIQUID GLASS	Apple-inspired theme — translucent frosted-glass panels with real backdrop blur, generous rounded corners, hairline highlight edges, and Apple system-blue accent. Ships a light Clear variant and a dark Smoked variant.
AURIS	Augmentation-era sci-fi HUD — warm amber on a near-black void, chamfered/angled panels, glowing targeting brackets, drifting scanlines, and technical monospace readouts. AURIS goes furthest: built on the open-source auris UI kit, it swaps in a whole different widget set (HUD panels, status badges, chamfered switches, and a live terminal-style log). Light + dark.

All seven share the same engine and features — only the look changes. The chosen theme is remembered across restarts. (Existing installs keep whatever theme you last selected; only fresh installs default to CLASSIC.)

Original components per theme

Themes don't just recolour the same widgets — every theme except Classic renders its own bespoke component set (panels, method/status badges, switches, the realtime log, the response metadata chips, the loading state…), so each can feel like a different product rather than a re-skin:

• BRUTALIST — hard "ink-stamp" method/status badges and slab panels with a stuck-on header label, a chunky switch that snaps across its track, printed key/value rows, and a fanfold line-printer realtime log.
• ARCANE QUEST — runic-framed parchment panels, a faceted gem status badge, a grimoire-style log, an enchanted-lever toggle, "runestone" metric chips, and a summoning-ring loading spinner.
• LIQUID GLASS — frosted glass tiles, translucent lozenge badges, a switch with a glossy liquid thumb, and a blurred terminal-style log (building on the theme's real backdrop blur).
• EDITORIAL — a print-magazine treatment: hairline "article" panels with serif headings, quiet small-caps tags, footnote-style metrics, reference-list rows, and a restrained dispatch-style log (all static, by design).
• DRACULA — a neon dev-console: panels with a // comment header and a soft purple glow, neon capsule badges, a REPL-style log (→ ← ✓ ✗), and a blinking-cursor "awaiting response" line.
• AURIS — the sci-fi HUD widget set built on the external auris kit (see the table above).
• CLASSIC keeps the standard widgets by design — the calm, native default that makes the others stand out.

It's the same app underneath; only the rendering changes. REDUCE VISUAL EFFECTS still applies — any motion in these widgets (e.g. the summoning ring, the glass ripple, the Dracula cursor) goes static.

Reactive effects

Themes don't just sit there — they react to your requests. When you send a request the active theme plays an effect scaled to its personality, and the wait itself is expressive: the longer a request is in flight, the more the SEND ritual builds, and the longer a response took, the heavier its arrival lands. Sending, success (2xx/3xx), client errors (4xx), server/network errors (5xx), and cancellations each look different.

Theme	While sending (builds with the wait)	Success	Error
LIQUID GLASS	a liquid level rises in the SEND button as you wait (plus a ripple on press); the wallpaper carries a soft highlight that follows your cursor	a clean concentric ripple + accent bloom — bigger and longer for slower responses	the glass cracks, then heals
ARCANE QUEST	a rune ring around SEND spins and fills as you wait; shooting stars and constellations drift through the starfield	a golden sparkle shower + shimmer sweep ("spell lands"), more lavish for slower responses	a crimson runic crack + a brief screen shake
BRUTALIST	the SEND button slams on press and a hard marching bar fills along its edge while waiting	a giant status-code ink-stamp (e.g. 200) thuds onto the screen, heavier for slower responses	a glitch-shake + bold code stamp
AURIS	a targeting reticle charges around SEND and its glow builds as you wait	a teal HUD scanline sweeps the response — bigger and longer for slower responses	a red alarm flash + a brief glitch/shake; timeouts and bad TLS certificates get their own distinct cue
CLASSIC / EDITORIAL / DRACULA	a gentle press (no build-up — calm by design)	a slim green status-pulse along the top edge, a touch stronger for slower responses	a slim red pulse

Status-code personalities

Beyond the broad success/error split, the loud themes give notable HTTP status codes their own cue, each in the theme's own idiom — for example 201 Created a spawn flourish, 204 No Content a quiet poof, 304 Not Modified a déjà-vu echo, 401/403 a barrier/ward, 404 a scatter/dissolve, 408 a slow sag, 429 Too Many Requests a repeated throttle pulse, 500 the heaviest crash, and 503 a flicker/brown-out. Codes without a special cue fall back to the broad success/error effect. The calm themes echo this quietly in the pulse bar: 304 double-blinks and 429 triple-blinks.

The calm themes (Classic/Editorial/Dracula) stay deliberately quiet — no background motion, no build-up, no shake — which is part of what makes the loud themes stand out. Changing themes also plays a brief sweep transition.

Themed sound

Turn on THEME SOUNDS in Settings (off by default) to add short, themed audio cues on send and response. It's independent of the visual toggle below, so you can have silent visuals or quiet sound as you prefer. See Settings.

Tip: On lower-powered machines or the web build, enable REDUCE VISUAL EFFECTS in Settings. It turns off all the heavy motion — the backdrop blur and animated wallpaper LIQUID GLASS uses, the ARCANE QUEST starfield, the AURIS scanline-and-hex ambient, and every reaction effect, screen shake, and theme-switch sweep across all themes — leaving a clean, static UI. (Sound is controlled separately by THEME SOUNDS.)

Dark mode

The DARK MODE toggle in Settings switches the active theme between its light and dark variants. Default is light.

DRACULA is a dark-first palette: its dark variant is the classic VS Code Dracula, and its light variant uses the Dracula project's official light companion, Alucard (a warm cream background).

Compact mode

The COMPACT MODE toggle tightens the UI — smaller fonts, padding, icons, tab-bar height, and grab handles — to fit more on smaller displays. Default is off. Approximate effects:

Element	Normal	Compact
Tab bar height	60 px	40 px
Body font	12 pt	11 pt
Small font	10 pt	9 pt
Icons	24 pt	18 pt
Default side-menu width	300 px	240 px

Why several themes?

They demonstrate that the whole UI reads sizing, colour, shape, typography — and now even its component widgets (every theme but Classic ships its own set) — from a theme layer, so the app can look dramatically different without changing behavior. A theme can also build on an external widget kit (AURIS uses auris). If you build from source, adding another theme is a self-contained change (see the project README/CLAUDE notes).

Related: The Interface (how the layout itself adapts to width).