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Theme Switching System

This repository includes a unified theme switching system that keeps your terminal environment visually consistent across ghostty, neovim, and tmux.

Quick Start

# List available themes
./switch-theme list

# Switch to a theme (automatically creates backup)
./switch-theme switch gruvbox-dark

# Show current theme
./switch-theme current

Available Themes

  • gruvbox-dark - Classic warm theme with high contrast
  • tokyo-night - Modern, popular dark theme
  • catppuccin-mocha - Warm, pastel-toned theme
  • nord - Cool, minimal arctic-inspired theme

How It Works

The switch-theme script updates configurations for:

  1. Ghostty (.config/ghostty/config) - Changes the theme setting
  2. Neovim (.config/nvim/after/plugin/colors.lua) - Updates the colorscheme
  3. Tmux (.tmux.conf.local) - Sources theme-specific color overrides
  4. tmux-powerline (.config/tmux-powerline/themes/rick.sh) - Copies theme-specific powerline colors

Tmux Theme Safety

Tmux themes are color-only overrides that preserve:

  • ✅ Your status bar layout and content
  • ✅ All key bindings
  • ✅ All plugins and functionality
  • ✅ All other configuration settings

Theme files only modify color variables like tmux_conf_theme_status_bg, etc.

True Color Support

All themes use 24-bit RGB hex colors (e.g., #282828) for perfect color matching:

  • ✅ Ghostty: Full RGB support
  • ✅ Neovim: Full RGB support
  • ✅ Tmux: True color enabled (tmux_conf_theme_24b_colour=true)
  • ✅ tmux-powerline: RGB hex color support

This ensures themes look identical across all tools with no color approximation.

Backup & Restore

Automatic Backups

Every time you switch themes, an automatic backup is created:

./switch-theme switch tokyo-night
# Creates backup at .theme-backups/20251028_123456

Manual Backup

Create a backup before experimenting:

./switch-theme backup

Restore Previous Configuration

Undo your theme changes and restore the most recent backup:

./switch-theme restore

List All Backups

./switch-theme restore-list

Backups are stored in .theme-backups/ (gitignored by default).

After Switching Themes

After running switch-theme, reload each tool:

Ghostty:

  • Press Cmd+Comma (opens settings and reloads)
  • Or restart the app

Neovim:

  • Restart nvim
  • Or run :colorscheme <theme-name> in an open session

Tmux & tmux-powerline:

tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

The powerline status bar should change immediately.

First-Time Setup

1. Install Neovim Theme Plugins

Open nvim and run:

:PackerSync

This installs the theme plugins added to packer.lua:

  • ellisonleao/gruvbox.nvim
  • folke/tokyonight.nvim
  • catppuccin/nvim
  • shaunsingh/nord.nvim

2. Install Font (Optional)

The terminal and Neovim GUI settings use JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Mono:

# Install a JetBrains Mono Nerd Font package for your platform.

3. Create Initial Backup

./switch-theme backup

Adding New Themes

To add a new theme:

  1. Create theme file in .config/ghostty/themes/new-theme
  2. Create theme file in .config/tmux/themes/new-theme.conf
  3. Add neovim plugin to packer.lua
  4. Update switch-theme script's AVAILABLE_THEMES and NVIM_THEMES arrays
  5. Run :PackerSync in neovim

Directory Structure

dots/
├── .config/
│   ├── ghostty/
│   │   ├── config                    # Main config
│   │   └── themes/
│   │       ├── gruvbox-dark
│   │       ├── tokyo-night
│   │       ├── catppuccin-mocha
│   │       └── nord
│   ├── tmux/
│   │   └── themes/
│   │       ├── gruvbox-dark.conf     # Color-only overrides
│   │       ├── tokyo-night.conf
│   │       ├── catppuccin-mocha.conf
│   │       └── nord.conf
│   ├── tmux-powerline/
│   │   └── themes/
│   │       ├── rick.sh               # Active theme (copied by script)
│   │       ├── rick-gruvbox-dark.sh
│   │       ├── rick-tokyo-night.sh
│   │       ├── rick-catppuccin-mocha.sh
│   │       └── rick-nord.sh
│   └── nvim/
│       └── after/plugin/colors.lua   # Colorscheme loader
├── .tmux.conf.local                  # Your main tmux config
├── switch-theme                      # Theme switcher script
└── .theme-backups/                   # Automatic backups (gitignored)

Troubleshooting

Themes don't match perfectly:

  • Each tool's theme is crafted specifically for that tool
  • Colors are matched as closely as possible across tools
  • Some variation is normal due to different rendering contexts

Tmux theme not applying:

# Reload tmux config
tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Neovim theme errors:

" Make sure plugins are installed
:PackerSync

Restore isn't working:

  • Check .theme-backups/ exists and has backup directories
  • Run ./switch-theme restore-list to see available backups
  • Manually copy from backup if needed

Safety Features

  • ✅ Automatic backups before every theme switch
  • ✅ Manual backup option available
  • ✅ Easy restore with single command
  • ✅ Non-destructive - only modifies color settings in tmux
  • ✅ Reversible - all changes can be undone