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Zed Editor Theme-Builder
- MeetingsBrowser 5mo agoThis feels shallow, but one of the biggest things keeping me from using zed is the lack of a good default dark theme. The defaults all feel very low contrast, gray on gray that makes the experience feel dull and off putting to me, even if the editor itself is great.
- hmokiguess 5mo agoTry this one, it’s my recent favourite and very polished: https://zed.dev/extensions/amp-theme https://zed.dev/extensions/amp-theme
- lindig 5mo agoThe repository link on that page does not work. Is there a preview?
- hmokiguess 5mo agoYou can see it on vscode themes https://vscodethemes.com/e/hrose.amp-theme/amp-dark https://vscodethemes.com/e/hrose.amp-theme/amp-dark
- pretzel5297 5mo agocan one match themes between two editors given zed uses treesitter?
- MeetingsBrowser 5mo agoThe repo for this theme is no longer available > The page you are trying to reach either does not exist, has been removed or you are not authorized to view it.
- hmokiguess 5mo agoYeah unfortunately looks like the maintainer made their stuff private, but it still works, I may republish it if gets removed from the store it’s so good.
- jeorb 5mo agoIt's not just you and it's not just Zed. Dark themes tend to be low contrast gray on gray. I usually look for a dark theme that looks good and then make a custom version with darker the background colors and brighter the foreground colors. Maybe it's time for to start publishing high contrast dark themes instead of just fixing it for myself.
- tuzemec 5mo agoThat's what I did: https://github.com/tuzemec/zedokai-darkest-machine https://github.com/tuzemec/zedokai-darkest-machine
- hdjrudni 5mo agoI like it! Thanks
- rapnie 5mo agoI do a lot of markdown editing, techdocs, static site generator, and the gray on gray makes me want to swap back to VSCodium for that task.
- helloplanets 5mo agoIt should take less than a minute to install a nice, high contrast dark theme, if you just search for the theme inside the Extensions window in Zed. But I understand your point, no reason for it not to come with a couple good high contrast dark themes.
- pretzel5297 5mo agoZed generally feels very engineer-designed and not in a good way.
- lycopodiopsida 5mo agoIt may feel even more shallow, but what keeps me on emacs are modus-themes. With luck, you can find a passable theme in your editor/ide of choice, but to find a good, high-contrast light theme is almost impossible.
- hyperknot 5mo agoAdd this to fix the contrast in all your dark themes: "experimental.theme_overrides": { "background": "#111", "panel.background": "#111", "text": "#eee", "text.muted": "#ccc", "title_bar.background": "#111", "tab_bar.background": "#111", "toolbar.background": "#111", "status_bar.background": "#111", "element.selected": "#333", "editor.background": "#000", "editor.gutter.background": "#000" }
- rhgraysonii 5mo agoFinally, I can reasonably get something truly high contrast and not just close to it as the current offerings are. This is a little thing, but Zed continues to keep getting so many things right that it has gone from “interesting” to “my preferred editor” after 15 years in vim. The git “follow mode” has been especially great transitioning into heavy usage of LLMs in development. Happy to see the team continues to just get more little things right.
- stephc_int13 5mo agoZed is "almost there" for me. The theme builder is good and easy to use, and I only needed a few minutes to make my own. Syntax coloring is almost there, but still lacking (I use C/C++) Small visual adjustment like line height in the UI text is not configurable enough (only two settings) Scrolling should have a smooth option, nothing prevents it, it should be super easy to add, I find it easier on the eyes when I move around code, especially on a 240Hz monitor. The editing experience is good, quick launch, no crashes, responsive, not too memory hungry.
- LoganDark 5mo agoScrolling is perfectly smooth when you use a trackpad. IMO, clickwheels are a legacy technology for scrolling (even when I use Windows, I left-hand a Magic Trackpad so I still have smooth analog scrolling).
- stephc_int13 5mo agoI never liked trackpad. I am an avid RTS player, the mouse is by far the superious input device. Besides, I never work on a laptop. And this is a lame excuse. Smooth scrolling should also work when using keyboard with and pageup/pagedown, at least as an option and with some tuning preferences.
- LoganDark 5mo agoThe arrow keys do scroll smoothly in Safari from my testing, but a clickwheel does not. Probably because scrolling inputs are meant to be precise.
- scottlamb 5mo agomacOS is a whole thing in terms of smooth scrolling, or HID (human interface devices) in general. It seems like Apple just doesn't put a lot of effort in terms of working with third-party HIDs: * There's a standard way to enable high-resolution scroll reporting (pixel-level instead of line-level), but Apple doesn't use it. * There's a standard approach to multi-touch digitizers/trackpads (documented and I think to some extent created by Microsoft, called PTP) which Apple doesn't support. * Apple's own Magic Trackpad speaks a proprietary protocol and it appears you can only speak it if you claim to use their USB VID/PID. And I don't think doing that would go over well in a commercial product. (And if you do manage to speak it, it turns out their driver really doesn't do two-finger scrolling well with tiny trackpads anyway. They probably only tested it on the generous dimensions of their hardware.) (Also, it attaches to your entire device, so having an additional interface with a different driver doesn't appear to work either.) But...you can inject smooth scrolling events via Core Graphics. So you can run a userspace program with accessibility permission that scrolls smoothly. And you can also communicate with USB devices from such a program. There are some existing programs for doing smooth scrolling with standard mice (Mac Mouse Fix is one). I'm writing a userspace driver for PTP to make my keyboard's built-in trackpad work properly.
- thecatapps 5mo agoI'm extremely glad to see something like this. I've tried to use Zed so many times, and this might sound neurotic -- but there are just so many little theming things that make a difference to me. For example, https://imgur.com/a/ia2GCgg https://imgur.com/a/ia2GCgg -- top is VSCode, bottom is Zed. Both using Svelte, and using a similar theme. - Angle brackets are a different color - Capitalized built-in components are a different color - Boolean props are a different color - Brackets are colored differently than text. The inspector is a game changer, clicking into these specific things in the preview they provide is super helpful.
- konart 5mo ago>theming things But those are syntax highlights. What does this have to do with theming? I'm not a Zed user, but https://zed.dev/docs/reference/all-settings#colorize-brackets https://zed.dev/docs/reference/all-settings#colorize-bracket... surely you can configure those.
- TonyStr 5mo agoI don't use zed or svelte, but this looks like the zed picture is missing a treesitter parser for svelte. Many editors have basic regex-based highlighting for many languages, and optional, more advanced, highlighting available through extensions. You may also get some semantic highlights provided by a language server if your editor uses the Language Server Protocol as well. I found one extension from a web search. Did you try this? https://zed.dev/extensions/svelte https://zed.dev/extensions/svelte
- thecatapps 5mo agoIt's been a while, but from what I remember you need that extension for any highlighting at all, and that screenshot is with it installed. Also, if I recall, it's something about that extension using an outdated treesitter parser or something along those lines.
- giancarlostoro 5mo agoSounds to me like one major Zed enhancement should be to suggest plugins if you open specific programming language files...
- mirekrusin 5mo agoDoes Zed have "I work for corp where ie. only github copilot is allowed, I don't want free auto completions or anything that sends code to 3rd party" flag?
- janice1999 5mo agoYou need to create and sign into a Zed account to use their prediction AI (Zeta) in order to get 2000 free predictions. https://zed.dev/docs/ai/edit-prediction https://zed.dev/docs/ai/edit-prediction
- iamskeole 5mo agoYou can also download the same model and run it locally without data leaving your machine, the Zed tram released it as open weights: https://huggingface.co/zed-industries/zeta-2 https://huggingface.co/zed-industries/zeta-2
- mirekrusin 5mo agoThat's all great (genuine), however my concern is less around "I can do X", more around "I can guarantee it cannot do Y" – ideally in one, global, obvious place. At the moment it seems it's great for personal development and development in environments where concerns around IP are less of an issue. It's not so clear how to use it in corporation context where you'd be in breach of employment contract accidentally because defaults mean sending confidential IP to 3rd parties.
- sev_verso 5mo agoOr you can use any other local model you already have.
- mirekrusin 5mo agoYes, Zed was first harness where you could seriously use local models. The issue is more about not having to check so many options to make sure it's all local. You can set up local model for chat but your auto completions will still be sending your code remotely.
- riidom 5mo agoHa.. thats a very cool way of adjusting. themes. I hoped for being able to adjust a lot of things around markdown edit and markdown preview though. My biggest problem with Zed right now. Themes are actually ok to me. Maybe thats on their todo though who knows.
- lejalv 5mo agoFor markdown preview, a recent release added these two settings (top-level in your settings.json): "markdown_preview_font_family": "Fira Sans Condensed", "markdown_preview_theme": "Ayu Dark", https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/54003 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/54003
- phren0logy 5mo agoIf you use Omarchy, the 3.8 update includes dynamic theming for Zed. It's very cool: https://github.com/APS6/omazed https://github.com/APS6/omazed
- fenaer 5mo agoThat is cool. It's a shame DDH is who he is, which stops me using it.
- pretzel5297 5mo agoThe fact that he's so anti-immigration as an immigrant himself is so odd. My rather negative interpretation is he doesn't consider himself to be an immigrant which screams white supremacy.
- self_awareness 5mo agoAnti immigration or anti illegal immigration?
- simonask 5mo agoImmigrants are called “expats” when they are white. I’m from the same country as DHH. Personally, not terribly sad that he left.
- kombine 5mo agoIt's not only because he is racist, there is little reason to use Omarchy from a technical standpoint https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/a-word-on-omarchy/ https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/a-word-on-omarchy/
- lejalv 5mo agoDankShell has this, via Matugen - https://danklinux.com/docs/dankmaterialshell/application-themes https://danklinux.com/docs/dankmaterialshell/application-the...
- 7777777phil 5mo agoThis is super cool - Started using Zed a couple weeks ago. Is there also something like a Theme gallery? Where one can look at Themes other people created? I would imagine not everyone has the inspiration to build their own "form scratch" but would still love to customize.
- tuzemec 5mo agoTry this: https://zed-themes.com/ https://zed-themes.com/
- VeejayRampay 5mo agotried using zed, didn't understand how to set up claude code integration, went back to vscode where setting up claude code is trivial
- fredoliveira 5mo agoUse the command palette to pick "agent: toggle" - that'll open the agent pane. Pick "Claude Agent" from the dropdown at the top if you see the Zed agent. Should be all you need.
- dilyevsky 5mo agoTheir ACP integration with Claude agent is extremely broken to the point of being almost unusable. It desyncs and breaks in other ways constantly requiring frequent IDE relaunch. I get that they want you to use their built-in agent but $200 Codex/CC plans are such a good deal it makes very little sense atm and the broken integration is just embarrassing...
- pointlessone 5mo agoA feature request of sorts. An option to reveal and highlight the element the color is for would be cool. There are so many colors and so many elements of the UI that it’s not immediately obvious where it is to properly see the changes I make.
- mosselman 5mo agoHow come I see my own github avatar in the designed editor along with others? I assume people also visiting the builder? Not very cool if I may say so.
- seanthemon 5mo agoI think those are placeholders, lol
- mosselman 5mo agoThey aren't I saw my own avatar.
- jshaqaw 5mo agoGot Zed for the first time last week. Turned it on and said “the visuals are so perfect I have nothing to change.” The defaults are amazing.
- ddlah 5mo agoI really would like semantic highlighting. E.g. i want to highlight definitions of types/methods in a different/stronger way than usages.
- Princesseuh 5mo agoZed has semantic highlighting: https://zed.dev/docs/semantic-tokens https://zed.dev/docs/semantic-tokens It was added a few months ago if I remember correctly.
- dham 5mo agoMy biggest problem with Zed right now is the font rendering doesn't look that good on MacOS. To me Sublime Text always had the best font rendering on Mac. Electron slowly over the years has gotten better and decent now. Zed just doesn't do the font justice. It's too thin or something.
- Jimmy0252 5mo ago[dead]
- lhousa 5mo agocall me a noob but would be nice to see which elements on the right panel are going to get affected when I hover over items on the left panel. right now now I have no clue what got changed :D for some of the elements.
- purpleidea 5mo agoOh wow. I tried zed, but I couldn't get the colour scheme to make the whole thing look like the classic "cobalt" from gedit/gtksourceview. I am legit willing to pay fair $ if someone wants to build such a theme for me.
- purpleidea 5mo agoI actually even tried to get the AI models to build such a theme, but they couldn't figure it out! They would just generate something wrong. When that works, I'm interested!
- self_awareness 5mo agoIf Zed would have a remote development plugin that can attach to both containers, and Windows remote hosts, then it would be an awesome VSCode replacement one day.
- pyr0hu 5mo agoWas just using this to tweak a few settings in an existing theme. It was really helpful to finding out which theme token associates with which UI element.
- AdityaAnuragi 5mo agoDefinitely a step in the right direction, always felt like new editors like Fleet (from Jetbrains) and Zed lacked quite a lot for themes
- lejalv 5mo agoUsing the editor, I did not manage to select the gutter to get editor.gutter.background (I found it via the search box). edit: clarity
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- odiroot 5mo agoI tried using it to reproduce my favourite Soda Dark / Sunburst colour combination from Sublime Text. It was a really sisyphean task. In the end I fed some screenshots (and original ST4 config) to AI studio and it came up with something workable but not exactly a replica. Naturally different editors have different semantic tokens.
- calmoo 5mo agoYou could solve this fairly easily by giving an LLM the json definition of your sublime text theme and just transforming it onto a zed spec theme? No need for screenshots.
- odiroot 5mo agoWasn't enough (at least with Gemini 3). I had do a few round trips with screenshots until it got all the details.
- calmoo 5mo agoInteresting - now that I think about it, feeding Claude my particular Xcode theme from VS code to replicate in Zed, the color tones were quite far off how it looked in cursor. I don't know enough about color rendering to know why that is, but I feel you!
- thesuperevil 5mo ago[dead]
- rbbydotdev 5mo agoCool to see all the progress with Zed, but it feels a bit too tied to user accounts. Prominent 'Sign In' buttons and ads like 'Try our new agentic...' They do have to make money and that's fine - but too often incentives start out this way and begin to corrupt the application... Whats next, ads inside file searches? (ubuntu blundered this way and soured the community) - "LQQKING for something? try new ai search by blah blah corp!" So it's hard to 'invest' my time tweaking my editor and theme only to have it start to betray me in the future. VSCode has already gone down this path - signing commit messages with 'copilot'
- graynk 5mo agoSign In button can be hidden: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/11054#discussioncomment-14501337 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/11054#disc...
- jgm22 5mo agoits time to go back to Zed