doc22940 / themer

🎨 themer takes a set of colors and generates themes for your apps (editors, terminals, wallpapers, and more).

themer

themer takes a set of colors and generates editor themes, terminal themes, themes for other apps, and desktop/device wallpapers.

Table of Contents

• Support themer
• Installation
• Usage
  • Example workflow
  • Example usage with npx
• Themer color sets
  • Original color sets
  • Ports from third-party themes
  • Create your own color set
    • Color mappings
    • Tips
  • Using base16 schemes with Themer
• Themer templates
  • Terminals
  • Editors/IDEs
  • Wallpapers
  • Other
  • Create your own template
• About
• Themer's Web UI

Support themer

• ⭐️ Star themer on GitHub
• 👋 Follow @themerdev on Twitter
• 🦁 Send a tip through the Brave Browser, either on the repository page or themer's Web UI

Installation

Don't love the command-line? Check out the Web UI.

mkdir my-dotfiles && cd my-dotfiles
npm install themer

If you do not keep your dotfiles under version control, you can simply install themer globally with npm -g install themer.

themer can also be used without installing, via npx—see example below.

Usage

Pass themer a color set, as many templates as you wish, and an output directory.

themer \
  --colors <npm package name OR file> \
  --template <npm package name OR file> \
  [--template <npm package name OR file>...] \
  --out <directory>

Your generated theme files, as well as a README on how to install them, will be written to the output directory.

themer can create themes from your custom color sets (see "Create your own color set" below) or from color sets published on npm (see themer-colors-default). The same is true for templates.

Example workflow

Say you wanted to generate a vim theme and desktop background using themer's default color set. First, install themer, the color set, and the templates:

cd my-dotfiles
npm install themer themer-colors-default themer-vim themer-wallpaper-block-wave

Then edit your package.json:

  ...
  "scripts": {
    "build": "themer -c themer-colors-default -t themer-vim -t themer-wallpaper-block-wave -o gen"
  },
  ...

Then run your new script:

npm run build

Now check the gen/ folder for your generated themes. Here's the result:

Example usage with npx

npx \
  -p themer \
  -p themer-colors-default \
  -p themer-vim \
  -p themer-wallpaper-block-wave \
  themer \
  -c themer-colors-default \
  -t themer-vim \
  -t themer-wallpaper-block-wave \
  -o output

Themer color sets

Original color sets

Name	Dark Preview	Light Preview
themer-colors-default
themer-colors-night-sky		(dark only)
themer-colors-polar-ice
themer-colors-finger-paint
themer-colors-monkey
themer-colors-right-in-the-teals

Ports from third-party themes

Name	Dark Preview	Light Preview
themer-colors-one
themer-colors-lucid
themer-colors-solarized
themer-colors-github-universe		(dark only)
themer-colors-nova		(dark only)
themer-colors-mojave
themer-colors-rivet

Create your own color set

To create your own color set, create a JavaScript file that exports a colors object, like so:

module.exports.colors = {

  // A color set can have both light and dark variants, but is only required
  // to have one.
  dark: {

    // Colors can be defined in any valid CSS format.

    // accent0-7 should be the main accent colors of your theme. See the table
    // in the "Color mappings" section for how the colors will be used in your
    // new themes.
    accent0: '#FF4050',
    accent1: '#F28144',
    accent2: '#FFD24A',
    accent3: '#A4CC35',
    accent4: '#26C99E',
    accent5: '#66BFFF',
    accent6: '#CC78FA',
    accent7: '#F553BF',

    // shade0-7 should be shades of the same hue, with shade0 being the
    // background and shade7 being the foreground. If you omit the
    // intermediate shades (1 through 6), they will be calculated automatically
    // for you.
    shade0: '#282629',
    shade1: '#474247',
    shade2: '#656066',
    shade3: '#847E85',
    shade4: '#A29DA3',
    shade5: '#C1BCC2',
    shade6: '#E0DCE0',
    shade7: '#FFFCFF'

  },

  // Same as above, except that shade0 should be the lightest and shade7 should
  // be the darkest.
  light: { ... },

};

Pro Tip: you can use themer's Web UI to more easily select your colors, then click the "Download" button to generate a colors.js file.

Then pass the path to your JS file to the --colors argument of themer.

themer -c path/to/my/colors.js ...

Color mappings

To help you choose colors for your own color set, this is approximately how most themer templates will utilize your colors:

Color Key	Typical Usage
accent0	error, VCS deletion
accent1	syntax
accent2	warning, VCS modification
accent3	success, VCS addition
accent4	syntax
accent5	syntax
accent6	syntax, caret/cursor
accent7	syntax, special
shade0	background color
shade1	UI
shade2	UI, text selection
shade3	UI, code comments
shade4	UI
shade5	UI
shade6	foreground text
shade7	foreground text

See themer's Web UI for a more visual representation of the color mappings.

Tips

• If you omit shade1 through shade6, themer will interpolate them automatically for you, using color-steps.
• themer supports any valid CSS color format; that means you can use chartreuse, rgb(127, 255, 0), rgb(50%, 100%, 0%), #7FFF00, hsl(90, 100%, 50%), etc.
• I would recommend checking your color set into your dotfiles repo. Once you've fine-tuned it, you might consider publishing it to npm for others to use! (If you do, consider naming your package starting with themer-colors- so that others can easily find it.)

Using base16 schemes with Themer

In place of a themer color set file or npm package, you can also provide themer with any base16 scheme YAML file.

themer --colors path/to/base16-scheme.yml ...

Refer to the base16 repository for a list of base16 schemes.

Themer templates

Terminals

• themer-hyper
• themer-iterm
• themer-terminal
• agarrharr/themer-gnome-terminal
• themer-conemu
• themer-cmd
• 0x52a1/themer-termite
• 0x52a1/themer-kitty

Editors/IDEs

• themer-atom-syntax
• themer-atom-ui
• themer-sublime-text
• themer-vim
• themer-vim-lightline
• themer-vscode
• themer-xcode
• themer-bbedit
• tomselvi/themer-jetbrains

Wallpapers

• themer-wallpaper-block-wave
• themer-wallpaper-octagon
• themer-wallpaper-triangles
• themer-wallpaper-trianglify
• themer-wallpaper-shirts
• themer-wallpaper-diamonds

Other

• themer-slack
• themer-alfred
• themer-brave
• themer-chrome
• PDDStudio/themer-android
• themer-sketch-palettes
• tomselvi/themer-tmux

Create your own template

To create your own template, create a JavaScript file that exports a render function, like so:

module.exports.render = function(colors, options) {

  // colors is an object that will have one or both keys: 'light' and
  // 'dark', each being an object with keys 'accent0' through 'accent7'
  // and 'shade0' through 'shade7'.

  // options is an object representing the original command-line args
  // passed to themer. This allows you to add special arguments that
  // will apply only to your template. An example of this is allowing a
  // themer user to specify custom resolutions for rendering a wallpaper.

  // This function should return an array of Promises, each Promise
  // resolving to an object of the following structure:
  // {
  //   name: '<the name of the file to be written>', // can include subdirectories, too
  //   contents: <a Buffer of the contents of the file to be written>,
  // }

};

Your JS file can then be passed to a --template argument of themer. That's it!

Here's an example template render function that generates a Slack sidebar theme from a themer color set.

Once you've developed your template, consider publishing it on npm (with repository name starting with themer-) so that others can use it!

About

themer is inspired by trevordmiller/nova and chriskempson/base16.

Conceptually, themer is very similar to base16, but:

1. It is lighter, and simpler to use.
2. It is more easily extensible with your own color sets and templates.
3. It integrates better with your dotfiles, especially if you keep them under version control.

Themer's Web UI

If you'd prefer to develop your themes visually, check out themer's Web UI, an offline-ready Progressive Web App.