Themes & Colors

Nash takes its colors from a theme. A theme sets the terminal background and text, the ANSI palette, the cursor, the accent color, and the tab colors. This page shows how to choose a theme, how to override single colors, and how to write your own theme.

Where the files live

File	Location	What it holds
`nash.toml`	`~/.config/nash/nash.toml`	Your settings, including which theme is active.
`themes.toml`	`~/.config/nash/themes.toml`	The themes. Each top-level table is one theme.

Set the NASH_CONFIG_DIR environment variable to use a different directory. Nash watches both files. When you save one, Nash reloads the configuration and the colors change at once.

When you update Nash, the first launch of the new build adds the themes that your themes.toml lacks. It does not change a theme that you edited. A shipped theme that you delete comes back at the next sync. See Configuration Sync for how to keep one out.

Choose a theme

Run Themes from the command palette (SUPER+SHIFT+P) or the View menu. The picker lists the themes by name, with the current one first and marked (Current). When you choose a theme, Nash writes its id to nash.toml and reloads the configuration.

You can also set the theme by hand. The id is the name of the table in themes.toml:

[ui]
theme = "matrix"

The file that Nash ships selects qodo. The shipped theme ids are nash, nash_gray, qodo, tokyo-night, dracula, nord, nordor, mocha, latte, gruvbox_dark, gruvbox_light, solarized_dark, solarized_light, rose_pine_dawn, one_dark_pro, monokai, night_owl, light_owl, winter_is_coming, atom_one_light, bluloco_dark, snazzy, and matrix. A theme without a name shows its id in the picker.

Matrix Green

Matrix Green (id matrix) is an old-school phosphor CRT theme. Every color is a shade of green on a near-black screen: the background is #0b140d, the accent is #00ff41, and the body text is a calmer #5ceb87, so the cursor and the active tab still stand out. The red slot is the dimmest and warmest color and the green slot is the most vivid, so a diff still reads correctly.

Matrix Green needs Nash 0.5.7 or newer.

Terminal text color

A theme can set the color of plain terminal text with the foreground key. This needs Nash 0.5.7 or newer. In the themes that Nash ships, only Matrix Green sets it. A theme without foreground keeps the built-in text color, so its ANSI palette stays as it is.

You can set the text color yourself with foreground in the [ui] table of nash.toml. This value overrides the theme:

[ui]
theme = "nord"
foreground = "#d8dee9"

Override single colors

These keys in the [ui] table of nash.toml take priority over the same value in the theme:

Key	What it sets
`background`	Terminal background color.
`foreground`	Terminal text color.
`color_accent` (or `accent`)	Accent color for highlights, selection, and folded pane strips.
`cursor_color`	Cursor color.
`cursor_bg`, `cursor_border`, `cursor_fg`	The cursor fill, its border, and the character under it.
`background_opacity`	Window opacity. The shipped value is `0.99`. A value from `0.9` to `1` is recommended.
`title_bar_opacity`	Title bar opacity. The shipped value is `1`.

Write your own theme

Add a table to ~/.config/nash/themes.toml. The table name is the theme id. Any top-level table that holds at least one setting appears in the picker. A value can refer to another value with ${table.key}.

[my-theme]
name = "My Theme"
desc = "A short description for the picker"
main = "#101418"
accent = "#ff9f1c"
background = "${my-theme.main}"
color_accent = "${my-theme.accent}"
foreground = "#d8dee9"
cursor_color = "${my-theme.accent}"
tab_bg = "#1b222b"
tab_bg_inactive = "${my-theme.main}"
tab_fg = "#ffffff"
tab_fg_inactive = "#5b6773"
ansi = [
    "#1b222b", # black
    "#e06c75", # red
    "#98c379", # green
    "#e5c07b", # yellow
    "#61afef", # blue
    "#c678dd", # magenta
    "#56b6c2", # cyan
    "#d8dee9", # white
]
brights = [
    "#4b5563", # bright black
    "#ef8891", # bright red
    "#aedb8f", # bright green
    "#f0d08f", # bright yellow
    "#7cc0f7", # bright blue
    "#d68ff0", # bright magenta
    "#6fcdd8", # bright cyan
    "#ffffff", # bright white
]

Nash reads these keys from a theme: background, foreground, color_accent, cursor_color, cursor_bg, cursor_border, cursor_fg, tab_bg, tab_bg_inactive, tab_fg, tab_fg_inactive, ansi, and brights. The name and desc keys only label the theme in the picker. Names such as main and accent are helpers that you can refer to with ${...}.

The ansi and brights lists hold 8 colors each, in the order black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white.

Font and line height

The [font] table of nash.toml sets the terminal font. The values are the ones in the shipped file.

Key	Shipped value	What it does
`font`	`"Hack Nerd Font \| JetBrainsMono Nerd Font"`	Font family. Separate fallback families with `\|`.
`font_size`	`12`	Size in points.
`line_height`	`1.1`	Line height multiplier. A value from `0.9` to `1.2` is recommended.
`italic`	`false`	Turns the italic face on or off.
`bold`	`false`	Turns the bold face on or off.

line_height needs Nash 0.4.0 or newer. Tab titles have their own size. See Tabs.

Inactive panes and dividers

These keys in the [pane] table of nash.toml control how Nash shows the panes that do not have focus. They are multipliers.

Key	Shipped value	What it does
`inactive_brightness`	`1`	`1` keeps the brightness of the active pane. A lower value dims the pane.
`inactive_saturation`	`0.9`	`1` keeps the colors. `0` gives gray scale.
`pane_divider`	`"light"`	Divider color: `match`, `light`, `dark`, `accent`, or `none`.

If you raise inactive_brightness above 1, raise inactive_saturation with it. Otherwise the text looks washed out.

Zen Mode replaces these two values with its own stronger values while it is on. See Closing Panes & Zen Mode.

Tab colors

A theme sets the colors of the active and inactive tab with tab_bg, tab_bg_inactive, tab_fg, and tab_fg_inactive. You can also give one tab its own color. See Tabs.