Theming the (git) diff view

[chrs-b]

I use the Ayu Dark theme and like it in general. However, the git diff view uses extremely low contrast colors which are barely recognizable.

What I would like to do is override the colors in the settings:

  "theme": {
    "mode": "system",
    "light": "One Light",
    "dark": "Ayu Dark"
  },
  "experimental.theme_overrides": {
    "editor.background": "#000000",
    "conflict.background": "#27F5F5", // this is not git diff deleted lines
    "conflict.border": "#27F5F5", // this is not git diff deleted lines
    "deleted.background": "#27F5F5", // this is not git diff deleted lines
    "deleted.border": "#27F5F5" // this is not git diff deleted lines
  },

My problem is I cannot find the right theme key for the colors used in the diff view panel, the editable view that opens when you click a file in the Git panel.

• Tried to look at the schema, which did not help.
• Tried to color pick the diff deleted line background and find it in the theme and it wasn't there.
• Tried other dark themes but it seems all have identical colors in the diff view.

Does anyone know which keys in the theme control the colors for new/changed/deleted lines in the diff view? Are those colors themable at all?

[lukejans]

Hey I believe these are the settings you're looking for. Just make sure to add a theme override for the light and the dark theme!

{
    "theme_overrides": {
        "Ayu Dark": {
            "created": "#62c755",
            "created.background": "<editor_bg_color>",
            "created.border": "#62c755",
            "deleted": "#ec6a5e",
            "deleted.background": "<editor_bg_color>",
            "deleted.border": "#ec6a5e",
            "modified": "#f5bf4f",
            "modified.background": "<editor_bg_color>",
            "modified.border": "#f5bf4f"
        }
    }
 }

[chrs-b]

Nope, unfortunately none of these have any impact on the git diff view (the one that opens when opening a file in git panel). At least not for me. I think those keys are for mainly edit predictions / auto-complete.

I am not sure whether theming the git diff view is already supported...

@JosephTLyons can I bother you with this?

[lukejans]

Something might be wrong on your end because I wrote my own theme before, and I know that controls the git diff. It does control a few other things, but they are all related to git. Are you sure that you specified the proper theme in the theme_overrides object? Maybe post some pictures and videos so people can more easily help.

Here is a demo showing what it looks like when you change the colours for git diff:

demo.mp4

[chrs-b]

Then I guess it's a bug...

As you can see, created/deleted/modified/conflict.background has no impact on the background of the lines, but changing the comments to italic works.

Screen.Recording.2025-08-28.at.4.20.19.PM.mov

Tried to

• disable all other settings
• change to One Dark theme
• tried new version_control settings

... nothing helped... I'm on Zed version v0.201.5

[lukejans]

My bad, I forgot about this... You're right that setting actually doesn't seem to work! The way I was changing the background color was by changing these keys:

{
    "theme_overrides": {
        "Ayu Dark": {
            "created": "<#>",
            "deleted": "<#>",
            "modified": "<#>",
        }
    }
 }

It appears that there is something wrong with the "created.background" and "created.border" keys. So I guess at the moment there is no way to change just the background color. You would need to change the entire git delete, modified, or created color.

[chrs-b]

Resorted to using "theme_overrides": { "[theme_name]": "version_control.deleted": "#[color]}".

I doesn't really solve my problem of the background of the lines being dim, as Zed still "dims down" any color used, which is quite annoying, but I guess it is what it is for the time being. This happens both in light and dark mode, but the problem is much more prominent in dark mode.

I wish they had added proper version–control.[action].background keys, but they didn't.

[elidickinson]

AFAICT, diffs in Zed only actually ever reference the deleted (or created etc) keys. The schema defines .background and .border for themes but there doesn't appear to be any code that ever looks at them.