Themes

Kitlig's look is a theme: the surface colors, the accent colors, the text colors, the fonts, and an optional background image. You can pick one of the built-in themes, tune your own, save it under a name, and share it as a file.

Open the theme editor from the burger menu (top left) with Theme....

Pick a built-in theme

The Mode dropdown lists every theme. The list is long, so type part of a name to filter it.

Dark and Light are the two base looks.
Dark Ocean is a deeper blue-black variant of Dark.
Below those sit thirty more dark presets named for what they look like: Glacier Morning, Dragonfruit Dusk, Kiln Smoke, Kelp Forest, Glowstick, and so on. Every one keeps its text and accents at readable contrast against its own surfaces.
Your saved themes come next, tagged "saved theme".
Custom is last.

Picking a theme applies it immediately. Nothing else to confirm.

Note

Every theme sits on either the Dark or the Light base, which sets the fixed parts of the interface such as disabled text and deep panel tints. The presets and anything you build in Custom are Dark-based.

Make your own

Choose Custom in Mode. The swatches start from whatever theme was showing, so switching from Glacier Morning into Custom gives you Glacier Morning's colors to edit rather than the stock Dark ones.
Click a swatch to change it. The interface updates as you pick.

The swatches come in three groups:

Surfaces: Background, Panel, Raised, Border. Background is the page itself, Panel is the sidebars and dialogs, Raised is hover states and inputs, Border is every divider.
Accents: Accent: Brass (the primary highlight, selected states, primary buttons), Accent: Teal (success notes and secondary highlights), Accent: Steel (neutral tints such as the scrollbar).
Text: Text: Primary (headings and body copy), Text: Secondary (labels), Text: Muted (hints, dates, and file paths). Kitlig derives the in-between text shades from these three, so a label still reads one step quieter than body copy whatever colors you choose.

Warning

Keep Text: Muted at 4.5:1 or better against Background, and keep the two main accents there too. Below that, the small labels and dates in the file panels stop being readable. The built-in themes all clear that bar.

Save a theme

Custom is a scratch palette. To keep a look, name it.

With Custom showing, scroll to Save as theme.
Type a name and click Save.

The theme is now selected, and it appears in the Mode list for every project. Kitlig stores it in your preferences, not in the project.

While a saved theme is selected, the same swatches are shown and any change saves straight into that theme. Above the swatches you have:

Rename: edit the name in place. Enter commits, Esc cancels.
Copy to Custom: copy the colors into the Custom scratch palette without touching the saved theme, so you can experiment from it.
Delete: remove the theme after a confirmation. Kitlig switches back to Dark.

Fonts and background image

Under Fonts, pick a Display, Body, and Monospace face from the bundled set. Display is used for section labels and the wordmark, Body for everything you read, Monospace for file paths and the status bar. Reset to Default puts the three back.

Under Background Image, Browse... picks an image that shows faintly behind the whole interface. Remove it to go back to flat surfaces.

Fonts and the background image belong to the theme too, so they ride along when you export it.

Export... writes the current theme, including your saved themes, to a kitlig-theme.json file. Import... loads one on another machine. See File formats.

Note

A theme file made on a newer Kitlig can name a preset this build doesn't have. The file still loads, and that one setting falls back to Dark.