Themes and fonts

Pomelo ships One Dark, One Light, Ayu Mirage and Gruvbox Dark, reads your own theme files, and lets you set the family, weight, line height, OpenType features and fallbacks of the interface, editor and terminal fonts.

Choosing a theme

Settings > Appearance > Theme has a Theme Mode:

• Static - one theme, picked in Theme Name.
• Dynamic - a Light Theme and a Dark Theme, and a Mode: Light, Dark, or System to follow macOS as it switches between light and dark.

KT steps to the next theme (the one in use now, in

either mode). In settings.json:

{
  "theme_selection": "dynamic",
  "theme_mode": "system",
  "theme_light": "One Light",
  "theme_dark": "My Theme"
}

Your own themes

Put theme files in ~/.config/pomelo/themes/ (Settings > Appearance > Open Themes Folder creates it). Pomelo reads every .json file there and reads it again when you save it, so edits show at once. A file is a theme family, in the same format as other editors' theme families:

{
  "name": "My Themes",
  "author": "you",
  "themes": [
    {
      "name": "My Theme",
      "appearance": "dark",
      "style": {
        "background": "#1e2127ff",
        "editor.background": "#16181cff",
        "text.accent": "#7aa2f7ff",
        "terminal.ansi.red": "#f7768eff",
        "players": [{ "cursor": "#7aa2f7ff", "selection": "#7aa2f73d" }],
        "syntax": {
          "keyword": { "color": "#bb9af7ff" },
          "string": { "color": "#9ece6aff" }
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

• A theme names only the colors it changes. Every other color comes from One Dark ("appearance": "dark") or One Light ("light").
• Colors are #rrggbb or #rrggbbaa.
• players[0] sets the caret and the selection.
• syntax colors highlighting by capture name (keyword, string, function, type, comment...); a dotted name like string.special falls back to string.
• Tokens Pomelo does not draw are ignored, so a theme written for another editor loads as it is. Mistakes (a broken file, a color that is not #rrggbb) are listed on the Appearance page.

A theme named like a built-in one replaces it.

Tokens Pomelo draws

background, surface.background, elevated_surface.background, panel.background, border, border.variant, border.focused, border.selected, element.background, element.hover, element.active, element.selected, ghost_element.hover, ghost_element.active, text, text.muted, text.placeholder, text.accent, text.disabled, icon, icon.muted, icon.accent, title_bar.background, toolbar.background, tab_bar.background, tab.active_background, tab.inactive_background, editor.background, editor.foreground, editor.active_line.background, editor.gutter.background, editor.line_number, editor.active_line_number, editor.indent_guide, editor.indent_guide_active, editor.invisible, editor.highlighted_line.background, editor.document_highlight.bracket_background, search.match_background, search.active_match_background, version_control.added, version_control.modified, version_control.deleted, link_text.hover, scrollbar.thumb.background, scrollbar.thumb.border, scrollbar.track.border, scrollbar.thumb.hover_background, panel.indent_guide, panel.focused_border, terminal.background, terminal.foreground, terminal.bright_foreground, terminal.dim_foreground, terminal.ansi.background, terminal.ansi.black to terminal.ansi.white with their bright_ and dim_ variants, and each of error, warning, success, info, hint, ignored with its .background and .border.

Adjusting a theme

theme_overrides in settings.json lays colors over any theme, built-in or yours, by name, in the same shape as a theme's style:

{
  "theme_overrides": {
    "One Dark": {
      "editor.background": "#1b1d23ff",
      "syntax": { "comment": { "color": "#7f848eff" } }
    }
  }
}

Fonts

Every font is set under Settings > Appearance: Buffer Font (the editor), UI Font, Agent Panel Font (the agent tabs' text size) and Terminal Font. The interface font has a family, size and weight; the editor and terminal fonts add a line height. The editor's text follows the buffer font size alone, whatever the UI font size is.

Setting	UI	Editor	Terminal
Family	ui_font	buffer_font_family	terminal_font_family
Size	ui_font_size	buffer_font_size	terminal_font_size
Weight	ui_font_weight	buffer_font_weight	terminal_font_weight
Line height	-	buffer_line_height	terminal_line_height
OpenType features	ui_font_features	buffer_font_features	terminal_font_features
Fallbacks	ui_font_fallbacks	buffer_font_fallbacks	terminal_font_fallbacks

• Family - any installed family. .PomeloSans and .PomeloMono are the bundled IBM Plex Sans and Lilex.
• Weight - 100 to 900; bold text stays bold.
• Line height - "comfortable" (1.618, the editor's default), "standard" (1.3, the terminal's default), or {"custom": 1.5}.
• OpenType features - tags and values: true turns a feature on, false off, a number picks an alternate. Turning off calt shows -> and != as plain characters instead of the font's ligatures.
• Fallbacks - families tried in order for characters the family lacks, before the system's own fallback. Symbols meant as text (such as the record dot some terminal apps print, check marks and arrows) then try the plain symbol fonts macOS ships, so they show as text rather than as color emoji; emoji themselves still show in color.

{
  "buffer_font_family": "JetBrains Mono",
  "buffer_font_weight": 450,
  "buffer_line_height": { "custom": 1.5 },
  "buffer_font_features": { "calt": false, "ss01": true },
  "buffer_font_fallbacks": ["Noto Sans CJK JP"],
  "terminal_line_height": "comfortable"
}

Features and fallbacks have no controls in Settings yet; their rows open settings.json.