A light theme with pure white background and higher contrast

[sriranggd]

Hi,

Fortunately or unfortunately, my primary sitting area has a lot of sunlight falling on the screen because of which dark themes don't work for me. I have been using the light theme on VS-Code and Idea IntelliJ for quite some time now. Both of those have a white theme with a pure white background and pretty good contrast for the text colours.

The closest that I see in Zed is "One Light" but (as several others have mentioned here in the discussions) it looks a bit washed out (probably because of low contrast and not having a pure white background).

Anyway for me to get a light theme like the one provided by VS-Code?

[SilentGlasses]

Pretty sure if you add this config to your ~/.config/zed/settings.json file you will find one you like....

"experiments": {
    "experimental_themes": true
}

Here's what mine looks like:

// ~/.config/zed/settings.json
{
    "theme": "One Dark",
    "buffer_font_size": 16,
    "experiments": {
        "experimental_themes": true
    }
}

[JosephTLyons]

Hey @sriranggd, curious, which VS Code theme specifically do you prefer? At some point, Zed will have the ability to accept user-defined themes.

[petros]

I wonder if a high contrast light one would help in this scenario, @sriranggd.

[sriranggd]

Apologies for the delayed response. I missed the notifications.. ! What works best for me on VS-Code is the Light+ (default light) theme. If I can use it, nothing like it..!

The closest one that I have seen on Zed so far is One Light but that one is also very low contrast. It feels a bit blurry and not vivid.

[iamnbutler]

Hey! I work on Zed's design – We are aware of contrast issues. Behind the scenes we are pushing on a multi-part system that should banish this problem forever, but it will take some time. Uninsured estimate: Sometime around June.

In the meantime, I may ship a couple of new themes when we land overrides in the next few weeks. Would the Github Light theme fulfill your needs if we shipped it soon-ish?

[photex]

In Vs Code I use "GitHub Light Monochrome Focused". In Xcode I use "Low Key" and this is my absolute favorite. Extremely comfortable in multiple lighting conditions. I "ported" that to CLion even (but haven't gotten around to VS Code yet).

[photex]

Here are examples of my themes in case it's useful reference for anyone.

Xcode:

VS Code:

CLion:

[sriranggd]

@iamnbutler Thanks for the response and sorry for the delay in responding. From the screenshot image you have shared, it looks like Github Light might work. It appears very similar to the Light+ theme on VS-Code that I use. For your reference here is how the two editors look on my system :

[sriranggd]

Please note that while the above screenshots show the code colours, the same goes to the rest of the editor UI also (like the file browser / tab bar / command pallette etc). If we can get some high contrast in those too, it would be great.. !

[iamnbutler]

Updated versions of one dark/light that should almost exactly match the canonical Atom versions should land in the next two weeks.

Let me know if these meet your needs!

[sriranggd]

Great..!

Have these landed now? I guess not. I am on 0.77.3 and the screenshots I have shared above are from this version.

[JosephTLyons]

We now have a ton of theme extensions - maybe there is something that works for you now!

[sriranggd]

Been on macOS Classic Light. That comes close. The colours are not so appealing to me but that's more of a personalization thing. So this issue can be closed now.

[MadLittleMods]

I just went through this exact same user journey. All of the current light themes for Zed are too dull/dim/muted and washed out.

I ended up creating a port of the VSCode Light+ theme for Zed 🚀: https://github.com/MadLittleMods/zed-theme-vscode-light-plus

Zed on Linux (dim)	Zed on macOS (normal)	VSCode on Linux (baseline)

The dim and washed out color issue seems to be a specific problem to Linux (Manjaro with XFCE, arch-based on a non-retina monitor) as things appear fine on macOS. The screenshots are using the Fira Code font (via the ttf-fira-code package) but I was also seeing the same problem with whatever default Zed font on Linux. I've cross-linked a bunch more context in a current limitations section in the theme readme.

• Some colors from themes render slightly differently than defined #9057
• Dark Text on Light Background is Rendered Weirdly #19100
• A light theme with pure white background and higher contrast #6485 (comment)
• [Accessibility] Low contrast / readability of matches, highlights, and selected text. #17890
• P3 wide gamut color support #8293 (comment)
• Improve Contrast in default themes #15521
• Even the theme previews on zed-themes.com are much more vibrant because the browser is rendering things as expected.