Themes

A theme is nine colours: a background, a text colour, two syntax accents, a selection, a find match, a panel background, and an error and warning colour. That is the whole palette, deliberately — this editor's aesthetic is one background, one text colour and two accents, so a "simplified Nord" is Nord's ground, its text, and the two of its sixteen colours that pair.

Error and warning come from the palette too, so a Nord editor never flashes an Atom-red underline.

Trying one

:theme                 list them; the current one is in [brackets]
:theme simple-nord     apply it now, nothing written
:theme save            keep it

Applying and saving go through the same code, so previewing a theme and keeping it produce the same screen. Nothing touches your config until :theme save, which writes a single theme = <name> line.

The built-in palettes are listed in Every config key.

What a theme will not touch

A colour you set by hand in your config stays yours. The rule is that being in the file is not the same as having been chosen: a value still equal to what shipped is not a decision and a theme may replace it, but a value you actually changed wins over the theme.

This is worth stating because it was once wrong in the other direction. The starter config wrote all nine colours out, so every config file was full of values its owner had never picked — and treating those as choices made every theme a silent no-op. See ADR 0114.

Writing your own

Put a file in themes/ beside your config — ~/.config/ase/themes/ — named after the theme:

# ~/.config/ase/themes/inkwell.ase
summary = Deep blue with warm accents
background = #0B1021
text       = #D8DEE9
syntax_type   = #E2B714
syntax_string = #7FB4CA

Then :theme inkwell, and :theme save to keep it. It is listed by :theme alongside the built-in ones, and a file named after a built-in replaces it rather than appearing twice.

Whatever you leave out comes from the defaults, so changing two colours does not mean restating nine. The full set of keys is on Every config key.

A theme file is read when you run :theme, so one you have just written works without restarting or touching your config.

Or set the colours directly

Nine keys in your config, with theme left unset:

background       = #1C1C1C
text             = #D0D0D0
selection        = #303030AA
find_match       = #3A3A3AAA
panel_background = #1C1C1CE6
syntax_type      = #87AFAF
syntax_string    = #D7AF87
diagnostic_error = #D75F5F
diagnostic_warning = #D7AF5F

Colours are #RRGGBB or #RRGGBBAA. The alpha channel is what makes the panels and the selection sit over the text rather than replacing it.

Colours set this way are yours and no theme overrides them, which is the difference between this and a theme file: a theme is a palette you can switch away from, and these are decisions.