Solarized

https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/

by behnamoh • 4 years ago

409 179 4 years ago

ethanschoonover.com

Ecco• 4 years ago

I’ve been using it for probably over 5 years now. I love it. Thanks Ethan!

freediver• 4 years ago

Is there a version for Sublime Text?

Brajeshwar• 4 years ago

Is this the one? https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Solarized%20Color%20Schem...

flobosg• 4 years ago

Are there other light color schemes similar to Solarized? The only one I have found is “Base16 Atelier Dune Light”: https://base16.netlify.app/previews/base16-atelier-dune-ligh...

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions!

dsissitka• 4 years ago

You might like one of the lighter gruvbox variations:

https://camo.githubusercontent.com/e814989a4842426cbafd88f51...

https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox

bradrn• 4 years ago

Gruvbox [https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox] has always seemed quite similar to me, particularly in its light modes.

nikvdp• 4 years ago

catppuccin [1] is similar, had been using solarized for almost a decade, but tried catppuccin about 6 months ago and it was so good I’ve switched over permanently. Like solarized there are light and dark variants and there are versions for vim and vs code and many other editors as well.

[1] https://github.com/catppuccin/catppuccin

aorth• 4 years ago

Selenized! Is also well thought out and available for the terminal, IDEs, vim, tmux, etc.

https://github.com/jan-warchol/selenized

tommica2• 4 years ago

Nice share, gotta check this one out!

cpojer• 4 years ago

Check out licht-theme: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=cnakazaw...

And the corresponding dunkel-theme: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=cnakazaw...

I have a bunch of set-up tips on how to use these across all tools here: https://cpojer.net/posts/the-perfect-development-environment

sbuk2• 4 years ago

Just posted this in response to another thread. If you’re a Sublime Text user, you might like Breakers.

osener• 4 years ago

Rosé Pine Dawn https://github.com/rose-pine/vscode

Flatwhite (available for emacs as doom-flatwhite) https://github.com/biletskyy/flatwhite-syntax

gruvbox-light

Nüshu https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=wheredoe...

These are the soft light themes I enjoyed after Solarized Light.

phailhaus• 4 years ago

Legendary color scheme, been using it for pretty much my entire career. My go-to has been using the light scheme for terminal and dark for vim. Can't live without it!

onionisafruit• 4 years ago

Any time I use some new software that can be themed I look for the solarized dark theme. It’s just dark enough without being too high contrast.

alwillis• 4 years ago

Same.

Haven’t used it lately; need to check if it’s been updated for truecolor terminal emulators like Kitty or WezTerm.

Big fan of Tokyo Night for Neovim these days: https://github.com/folke/tokyonight.nvim

masswerk2• 4 years ago

Mind that the BBEdit information and format is out of date. Updated files can be found at the original project repository [1]. Moreover, due to containerization the "Color Schemes" directory has meanwhile moved and is now at

`~/Library/Containers/com.barebones.bbedit/Data/Library/Application\ Support/BBEdit/Color\ Schemes`.

(This can be simply navigated to from within BBEdit via the "BBEdit" menu > "Folders" > "Color Shemes". This will open the folder in the Finder, just copy the `*.bbColorScheme` files there.)

[1] https://github.com/rcarmo/textwrangler-bbedit-solarized

rcarmo• 4 years ago

Thanks for this. I will add an issue so I can note that in the docs.

masswerk2• 4 years ago

Thanks for providing the color schemes!

D13Fd• 4 years ago

I used Solarized for a long time, but now I’ve moved on to newer themes. For some reason Solarized just looks outdated to me.

andbberger• 4 years ago

but now I’ve moved on to newer themes

care to share?

monkpit• 4 years ago

Not the poster but I personally really dig Oceanic Next

INTPenis2• 4 years ago

Not the poster but I moved on to Nord from Solarized and am quite happy.

thiht• 4 years ago

For some reason Solarized just looks outdated to me

That might just be some kind of fatigue because I've experienced the opposite recently!

I've been a happy user of Visual Studio Code's default dark theme for a few years, and one day I snapped and just couldn't stand looking at it anymore. I switched to Solarized Light (yeah) and I find it extremely refreshing. I just had to tweak the color for "deleted block" in the scrollbar which was way too close to the "compilation error" color.

I guess some people just need change sometimes!

AceJohnny22• 4 years ago

I credit Solarized with setting the baseline allowing proper "dark" themes to be more commonplace. I'm going out on a limb, but perhaps macOS' Dark Mode, or VSCode's dark mode, wouldn't exist without Solarized blazing that path.

It's kinda funny how, before Solarized, I would see tons of gimmicky themes like some that were going for a Matrix or "classic terminal" feel, going all in on a certain theme but eschewing real usefulness. I want my basic terminal colors to remain adjacent to their intended hues! I want different keywords/tokens in my code to be distinguishable!

Ethan's application of color theory/science to the landscape was like a beacon in the darkness.

Before Solarized, I used Zenburn (I actually still do in some environments, I'm not too keen on the blueish hue of Solarized backround.) I also like Tango Light/Dark.

soulofmischief• 4 years ago

I feel like we've had a similar theme journey. These days I use darcula and its derivatives I some places, Solarized in others. Tango dark as well. And fond memories with Zenburn. Monokai gets an honorable mention.

29athrowaway3• 4 years ago

If you used Borland C++, DBase, Lotus 123, WordStar and others... or used a monochromatic monitor (green, cyan or white on black), you used light text on a dark background.

By 2010, when Solarized appeared, the larger portion of the people that started coding on a light text on dark background had already retired.

Solarized did a good job in terms of distribution, I give you that 100%. But it is not the most important theme in history or anything of the sort.

mihaic• 4 years ago

Not sure why you're downvoted, but anyone that fondly remembers the "Borland Blue" days probably agrees with you.

dsr_• 4 years ago

Macintosh and Sun machines had black text on white backgrounds. Suns had incredibly large screens with lots of dots.

Commodore 64s defaulted to white on blue.

Apple II and IBM machines all started out with monochrome white (green, amber) on black.

teh_klev• 4 years ago

the larger portion of the people that started coding on a light text on dark background had already retired.

We're not that old!

UI_at_80x24• 4 years ago

I'll add WordPerfect v5.1 for DOS.

White text on Blue background.

Fnoord2• 4 years ago

I don't remember C=64 colors (friends had one, we did not) but my PC had MSDOS. The text editor was blue background, grey or white foreground. But DOS itself was gray on black. And I used DOS as my OS because it was lightweight.

Emigre_• 4 years ago

Memories!… QBasic was white over blue, and Turbo Pascal yellow over blue.

Fnoord2• 4 years ago

My first love for this kind of colorscheme probable goes to KDE's CDE theme (CDE itself being before my time).

Retric2• 4 years ago

What exactly do you mean proper “dark” themes? Being able to swap to coding in light test on a dark or dark text on a light background goes back to at least windows 3.11.

Solarized dark theme to me looks just like several other similar themes that predate it ex: https://superuser.com/questions/156979/how-to-i-use-textmate...

But I assume you have something specific in mind here?

wakaru44• 4 years ago

I would assume 'proper' means 'adequate in terms of function and aesthetics'. maybe something like 'themes that don't eschew real usefulness'. those themes did exist before solarized, but they were not the norm in many circles (mine included), as many authors did sacrifice function for the look&feel.

solarized demonstrated how to apply colour theory/science to the landscape.

I would add that it has been not just the theme that serves as an example, also the _how to make_ a theme following those principles.

beachy• 4 years ago

I credit Solarized with setting the baseline allowing proper "dark" themes to be more commonplace.

Apart from the IBM 3279 color terminal, released in 1974, and literally hundreds of devices following (and maybe preceding) that.

AceJohnny22• 4 years ago

keyword being "proper" as in "good", as opposed to "whatever the technical limitations allowed"

jes5199• 4 years ago

I’ve always felt like the contrast was too low, feels harder to read

ziml77• 4 years ago

I have the same issue with Solarized. I need something with just a little more contrast.

One Dark is more like what I want.

But even that's not perfect. The color for comments (as with many dark themes) is too dim. Comments shouldn't stand out, but they should also be easy to read when needed. I think that Visual Studio's dark color scheme actually does great there. The green comments separate themselves well from the code, don't draw too much attention to themselves, and they're still clear when you're trying to read them.

onli• 4 years ago

I think that comments should stand out and modified solarized accordingly in my editors. I made it a bright lightish green (in dark mode) in my main editor. If you haven't yet, I can only recommend to give that a try.

Justification: A comment that exists should only exist if it is important, if it is helpful documentation for a function or for some specific code section. If that's the case then a comment should absolutely be the first thing you see, thus it should stand out.

That sound a bit like I would advocate to comment less, but that hasn't been the effect of that change. To the contrary, I'd say it was a factor in my placing more (in my eyes important) comments in code bases than many other developers I work with.

bscphil• 4 years ago

Yeah, a good example of this is here - IMO the background color is just much too bright for the base text color to be so dark. You need a little contrast in the luminosity, even if you have perfect color vision. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/altercation/solarized/mast...

trymas• 4 years ago

I concur 100%.

It's rather thought out colour scheme and kudos for the success, but contrast is way too low. My eyes got tired very fast while trying to use solarized scheme.

I've stuck with `Tomorrow Night Bright` for quite some time now as I enjoy the scheme and the contrastiness of it, though I tweaked it that the text is almost pure white and background is almost pure black.

pneumic• 4 years ago

Way, way too low for me. I notice people who use it tend to be on the younger side and/or must have very good eyes.

Personally, astigmatism causes halation[1] of the text with dark modes. The only time I find them tolerable or needed is when I'm in a very dark room.

In the day, when I do most of my work, I am in a lit room or outside and I am looking at physical documents, desktop environments, and web pages that are all light-colored. I would feel my eyes and brain churning every time I'd have to re-focus on a dark-themed window in this context, so it only makes sense to have my code/text light-colored as well.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/halation

dang• 4 years ago

Solarized is gone? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17776581 - Aug 2018 (3 comments)

The Man Behind ‘Solarized,’ the Most Important Color Scheme in Computer History - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10525589 - Nov 2015 (1 comment)

Solarized on The Changelog - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3776077 - March 2012 (4 comments)

Solarized color theme for Emacs 24 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3308271 - Dec 2011 (11 comments)

Solarized - Color scheme for vim, mutt, terminal emulators - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393976 - March 2011 (154 comments)

pjerem• 4 years ago

As someone with an important astigmatism, I cannot stare more than a few minutes at a dark background color scheme, even if I love their aesthetic.

So I’m stuck writing code all day long with light schemes.

In this context, Solarized is a gift and I’m grateful for it. I just cannot name another light color scheme you could stare at all day long without burning your eyes.

tommica2• 4 years ago

I've found both gruvbox and github light theme to be something that my eyes can handle.

sbuk2• 4 years ago

I’m a weird freakish anomaly that actually prefers lighter color schemes. I’ve found that, with some tweaks, the default light scheme in Sublime Text to be pretty awesome. It’s calle Breakers. The greys are a little too light, but I find there is a bit more contrast than Solarized.

cornedor• 4 years ago

Dark mode isn't necessary better for your eyes than light mode [1]. I prefer a consistent lightning more, and that is often easier done with light mode. Although, this is getting better since more and more sites and apps implement it. However, not all, this results in sometimes being surprised by a white flash after browsing through some darker sites.

1: https://www.allaboutvision.com/digital-eye-strain/is-dark-mo...

number6• 4 years ago

I also prefer light modes, especially during daytime. I feel it's easier on the eyes.

tmtvl• 4 years ago

I also prefer light colour schemes. Didn't use to, I used dark themes (like gruvbox) for a while, until I learned the value of not having my monitors blast my eyes with 100% brightness. Solarised actually helped me go from dark to light themes as the yellowish background and lower contrast were easier on my eyes than white and high contrast.

Even since I learned to turn down my monitor brightness so that white on my monitor is about the same brightness as a white piece of paper in the room, I have been very fond of Prot's Modus Operandi (https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes).

elric• 4 years ago

You're not the only one. There are dozens of us, probably, who prefer lighter colour schemes. I can't stand dark mode in all but a few cases. A terminal is sort of fine, but an IDE or a content-rich webpage absolute has to be light, otherwise my eyes start to get funky.

discreteevent• 4 years ago

What I find is that with dark mode I can spot details better - a missing bracket for example. But with light mode I can see the bigger picture better - I can scroll through a page and find what I want more quickly. This, I'm sure, is a very subjective experience.

So I use light mode now all the time. That said, dark mode will always look cooler.

bpye• 4 years ago

Yep. I tried for a while to use dark themes but eventually realised they were making it worse, not better. Even if Solarized isn't the best light theme in existence, it's also available either built in or an extension for practically every tool I use.

luispauloml2• 4 years ago

Up until I read your comment, I never really made any association between my astigmatism and my discomfort with dark themes. Now it all makes sense. Also, since too much white was never a problem for me, my theme of choice in Emacs is Nano Light¹ and Solarized anywhere else.

¹ https://github.com/rougier/nano-theme

wahlis• 4 years ago

Same for me, I also have astigmatism and issues with dark themes. Thanks for the insight!

aitchnyu• 4 years ago

As a guy with regular myopia, I have trouble with dark themes.

luispauloml2• 4 years ago

Well dang it... I have both astigmatism and myopia. I guess I have double the discomfort, then.

jeromenerf• 4 years ago

Font legibility and point size are quite crucial for me. I can work with light on dark if using a non blurry pixmap font, terminus being my favorite.

I tend to use monochrome on dark backgrounds, I prefer white on blue to the usual light grey on black.

During the day, I like the rather colorful light Emacs leuven theme: https://github.com/fniessen/emacs-leuven-theme.

For some reason, I find the default acme editor very nice to use, from a legibility and information density POV.

jjuel• 4 years ago

I used to love Solarized when using a light theme then I found papercolor. That is my preferred light although I am using a dark Tokyo Night now. I switch frequently.

https://github.com/NLKNguyen/papercolor-theme

JeremyNT• 4 years ago

So I’m stuck writing code all day long with light schemes.

Don't feel stuck! I think the world has gone a bit mad chasing "dark mode" for text everywhere. This must be highly personal, but light themes really reduce the fatigue on my eyes, and I've always found them preferable too. Maybe it's really the dark mode people who are stuck?

If you like solarized light, you might want to try gruvbox light [0], which I find even easier on the eyes.

[0] https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox

100011_100001• 4 years ago

White backgrounds create static like artifacts in my vision. Doesn't happen as much with dark. I've tried Light Themes because in theory it's better for asthegmatism, but it's definitely worse for me.

I even thought that maybe I had to make everything light themed so there is no contrast between pages /apps but it doesn't help.

This is purely a personal observation of how my eyes work.

iLemming• 4 years ago

I cannot stare more than a few minutes at a dark background color scheme

I've struggled to find a perfect set of color themes my entire life, at least, that's what now it feels like. And at some point I realized, the smaller the palette, the fewer color variations there are, lesser the strain on the eye. Also, staring for a long time at the same - light or dark (it doesn't matter) color theme makes me feel tired.

In the end, I settled on two different [customized] themes, based on base-16 color themes. My main tool, my editor of choice is Emacs. I spent most of my time in it. I'm typing this comment in Emacs, while I have HN opened in the adjacent window (still in Emacs). I use circadian.el, which allows me to set my themes based on the time of day. They switch automatically and I love that.

Maybe try different color themes based on the light source, your mood, time of the day, place, etc.?

Archelaos• 4 years ago

On my screen, Base 2 and Base 3 or respectively Base 02 and Base 03 appear to be quite close. The difference seems to be sufficient for highlighting a whole line, but when used to highlight individual characters they do not stick out enough, so that I need to search for them on the screen.

Lapsa• 4 years ago

my 2nd favorite color scheme after Archery https://github.com/Badacadabra/vim-archery/blob/master/image...

aszantu• 4 years ago

and here I am, clicking on this because I thought it's about solar power, can we stop this trend of using words for products that already have some other meaning?

cton• 4 years ago

Solarisation is a photographic technique

INTPenis2• 4 years ago

I used Solarized a long time but recently I've been a Nord.

mmackh• 4 years ago

I've been a big fan of Solarized Light and have been using it for over 10 years, everywhere. Even based my personal site design around it. Thank you.

manx• 4 years ago

This reminds me of my fun experiments with color distances and genetic algorithms to automatically generate solarized-like color schemes: https://github.com/fdietze/chromogene

kingkongjaffa• 4 years ago

Solarized was my first contact with making my terminal look nice and matching it with my editors etc.

Nowadays I use nord everywhere but when I first followed the oh-my-zsh + iterm2 tutorials for OSX, I definitely used Solarized for a good 6 months.

Nord: https://www.nordtheme.com/

alexruf2• 4 years ago

Does someone know of a tool that helps to generate the themes for the individual applications based on your preferred color scheme? I am currently using Dracula (https://draculatheme.com/) as color scheme. Not that it is my favourite color scheme (actually I don’t like it’s colours at all), but the fact that the creator is providing ready to use themes for almost every application is the main reason for me to use it. I want a consistent look across all of my applications.

kseistrup5• 4 years ago

It ought to be possible to do a search/replace operation on dracula themes to get e.g. solarized everywhere.

It would be useful with a public repository with [e.g.] solarized theme for “all” applications, the same way Dracula Theme has.

alexruf2• 4 years ago

Actually that’s a fantastic idea. Should have thought of that for myself. But as a warning, a lot of the Dracula themes are are not correctly (for some reason especially the Dracula Pro themes). For example the iTerm and Kitty theme have same foreground and background color set so I had to fix them manually. Doesn’t seem that they are tested by the author.

nilueps• 4 years ago

https://github.com/chriskempson/base16

kensuke155• 4 years ago

I use Base16 to apply Dracula across my terminal applications.

https://github.com/chriskempson/base16

otikik• 4 years ago

EDIT: other answers point to base16 as a way to do this automatically. Use that. Leaving my previous comment here just in case.

I think what the creator is doing is outsourcing the maintenance of each individual app to a maintainer that cares; the themes folder contains pointers to other repos:

https://github.com/dracula/dracula-theme/tree/master/themes

I think that is a good idea.

This could be used to "reverse-engineer a generic platform" relatively easily:

    1: Fork Dracula and its themes
    3: For each color in Dracula.Palette
    4:   Find and replace color.hex by color.refjex on themes
    5:   Find and replace "color.r,color.g,color.b" by color.refrgb on themes
    6:   Find and replace "color.h,color.s,color.l" by color.refhsl on themes

The whole idea would be replacing #282a36 for a reference like `{{Background}}` and then using a templating language like handlebars or m4 to generate the themes.

Of course steps 4,5 and 6 are more complex than 3 lines. One will have to come up with a way to filter out spaces, commas and other things. I expect a lot of the apps out there to expect hex numbers though.

brabarossa• 4 years ago

They even have instructions for Hacker News! On behalf of my tired eyes, thank you.

dngray2• 4 years ago

I used to use solarized, but switched to selenized some time ago.

https://github.com/jan-warchol/selenized/blob/master/whats-w...

Never looked back. Next best theme would have to be nordtheme.com

Tade02• 4 years ago

The author of Selenized is known in some circles for applying the same meticulous approach to make some absolutely mad cheesecake.

Aeolun3• 4 years ago

This is a solid reason to try out the theme.

roydivision• 4 years ago

You can't just leave that there without some sort of reference. Cursory searches haven't revealed anything. I now must try this cheesecake.

bjackman• 4 years ago

Thanks I'll try this - I have discovered exactly the problem described i.e. Solarized does not have enough contrast when using shitty monitors or in a very bright room. Normally I just switch to a random high contrast theme on those days but maybe Selenized would be a universal solution.

Quequau• 4 years ago

I use a Firefox browser extension called "Dark Reader" [1] to force a dark mode on most of the websites I frequent and I'm more or less happy with it. If there was an extension that Solarized them instead, I'd probably go with that instead.

https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader

tigrisc• 4 years ago

You can go to color options in darkreader and set solarized as the theme.

deliriumchn• 4 years ago

solarized dark was my fav theme for a couple of years until I found Ayu (especially ayu mirage). Its a bit easier for my eyes and I very like the color palette.

If someone is looking for soft and easy to read theme I always suggest to try one of Ayu ones (they have 3 + 3 bordered)

foozed2• 4 years ago

I really like ayu (mirage is my favorite as well) and pretty much use the colors everywhere except for syntax highlighting where I just can't switch away from monokai pro.

mgdv• 4 years ago

Again, I started with solarized but moved onto other themes. I think it was one of the first themes that was implemented almost everywhere. It was nice to have my browser, IDE, window manager etc all themed up the same way.

I also appreciate the work he went into to set the color scheme up. I feel the same spirit with the Modus themes[1] for emacs

[1] https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes

zasdffaa2• 4 years ago

I don't buy this eg.

Black text on white from a computer display is akin to reading a book in direct sunlight and tires the eye.

No it doesn't. I don't know where that claim comes from. In sunlight reading is reduced through glare.

Personally his red on black makes those words unreadable. I really doubt his claims of testing it. But good luck to those who it does work for.

Aissen• 4 years ago

Has anyone done a cross-app configuration tool for color themes yet ? It seems most themes just reimplement everything. For example, I like tokyonight, but it seems everyone needs to port it to their favorite tool, just like solarized did:

https://github.com/enkia/tokyo-night-vscode-theme#other-port...

Even the open source and professional theme Dracula seem to rely on manual porting:

https://github.com/dracula/dracula-theme

Aeolun3• 4 years ago

I’ve certainly thought of it. In aggregate it would save everyone a lot of work, but it’s never really been worth the time for me personally.

M1Sports20• 4 years ago

Base16 colors - https://github.com/chriskempson/base16

kseistrup5• 4 years ago

Anyone here using Penumbra?

https://github.com/nealmckee/penumbra

»Penumbra is a mathematically balanced colour scheme constructed in a perceptually uniform colour space with base colours inspired by the shades of colour occurring in nature due to the light of the sun and the sky. It cleanly separates the perceptual properties of colours while optimally utilizing the available colour space of typical displays.«

It was mentioned here ~3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32348461

Aeolun3• 4 years ago

For some reason I find it really hard to look at. Everything has the same weight (in terms of color, if that makes sense), and I need some things to stand out, not just have a different color.

kseistrup5• 4 years ago

Thanks for the mini-review.

KolenCh2• 4 years ago

This seems interesting. But the claim about being "mathematically balanced" is skeptical to me. It seems it does better than Solarized which claimed a similar but weaker statement.

The nasty details in color space is basically that it is a non-Euclidean metric (when considering perceptual uniformity). There are empirical formula describing a metric. And one can probably numerically optimize in that metric. But it doesn't seem to do something like that (I skimmed through only.)

kseistrup5• 4 years ago

I agree, the “mathematically balanced” is a peculiar sales pitch. Are our eyes “mathematically balanced”? If not, then the palette probably shouldn't be either.

aikinai2• 4 years ago

Thanks for suggesting this one; I missed it but it looks great. Trying it out now!

cgeier• 4 years ago

I loved solarized when it was new (to me). But after several years, I couldn't stand looking at those blue tones all day.

I switched (in vim) to gruvbox [0] (better maintained "community" edition [1]), which also has a dark and a light version, which is a lot warmer.

0: https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox 1: https://github.com/gruvbox-community/gruvbox

thanks, hatsubishi, for pointing out the typo in the second link!

hatsubishi• 4 years ago

It's https://github.com/gruvbox-community/gruvbox

iterati2• 4 years ago

This is the same reason I went to gruvbox from solarized. The warmer colors keep their contrast even with Flux[0] late into the night.

0: https://justgetflux.com/

xwowsersx3• 4 years ago

Same. I regularly switch between light and dark mode. For me, dark feels more comfortable in the short-term, but I find that I can't use dark for an entire day. Anyways, I previously used solarized. It's very pleasant for a certain period of time, but like many color themes that I like, it doesn't actually "scale" in the sense that I can't use it for extended periods of time. Gruvbox, on the other hand, I can use for very long stretches.

aasasd2• 4 years ago

I heard that astigmatism is the reason some people find reading white-on-black intolerable: the edges shift from their proper places, look doubled, this kind of stuff. Idk if astigmatism-correcting glasses fix the problem, as I'm not that diligent with my prescriptions.

Personally, somehow I'm ok with looking at code and some notes in light-gray-on-black, but reading paragraphs of text is immediately off-putting. The proliferation of ‘dark theme’ sites is not working out for me.

anileated• 4 years ago

Cool fact if you’re on macOS: Gruvbox fits perfectly iPulse’s Starfighter skin colors.

After ditching VS Code in favor of Alacritty/Tmux/NeoVim I tried a few themes, really liked Nord but ended up sticking with the cozy Gruvbox.

reify_null• 4 years ago

For those interested in gruvbox, give gruvbox-material ( https://github.com/sainnhe/gruvbox-material ) a look. It's a bit softer than the original, which I find a bit easier on the eyes.

trabant00• 4 years ago

I find Solarized, zenburn, and other low contrast dark themes too hard to read in bright environments. And I try to always work in a decently bright environment.

Which leads me to the following question: has anybody migrated from dark themes to light themes after years of use? I've always had my terminal and my editor dark, but my browser light. I have a hard time reading long text like prose or forums in dark mode. So that makes me wonder if my code and terminal could also be better in light themes and I just have to struggle to get rid of my dark theme habit.

napolux• 4 years ago

Came here for the alternatives in comments, not disappointed, thanks!

sitta2• 4 years ago

It's odd to me that there's essentially no competition to Solarized Light when it comes to light color schemes, and all of the focus is on dark. Personally, I don't like dark themes and find them way harder to read. I love Solarized Light, but I do sometimes wish there were a few more options available for light users.

Funnily enough, I lived next to Ethan for a few years in Seattle, and was not a solarized user prior to meeting him. Thanks Ethan!

markeibes2• 4 years ago

That is simply not true. I can recommend Kai Light, Espresso Light, XCode Classic Light, Horizon Light off the top of my head.

sitta2• 4 years ago

Thank you for the recommendations. I will check them out. To be fair, it's been a couple years since I last looked, and at that time it wasn't that there were _no_ other light themes, but there were very few and they were not nearly as good as Solarized, which I guess is a personal preference. But, I really do appreciate the recommendations, and look forward to trying some new colors.

yakubin• 4 years ago

I use Alabaster[1]. Contrary to most themes, it is quite minimalistic and it emphasises comments instead of de-emphasising them. I like the minimalism, because it lets me focus, instead of marking every single thing on the screen as a different colour of “important” making my head spin.

[1]: <https://github.com/tonsky/sublime-scheme-alabaster>

sirtomato• 4 years ago

One of my favorite themes has a light grey for everything except strings (light blue) and comments (white). Comments are super important, they should stand out.

thechao• 4 years ago

I use printer mode (gray scale). I mean; originally just to irritate my boss during code review, but then it grew on me. I wish there was a good black&white underline/italic/bold theme a la Algol 68.

8589934591• 4 years ago

I use atom light. I find it the best light theme so far.

Oreb• 4 years ago

Adding to the other suggestions: I much prefer Leuven and Modus Operandi over Solarized Light.

don_albrecht• 4 years ago

I give solarized a lot of credit. Before it came out I pretty much stuck with whatever default theme my application used. After using solarized I started caring about my tools much more. Today, I tend to use Darcula most of the time for IDEs, but I also spend much more time customizing my tools beyond just the theme.

djha-skin2• 4 years ago

I use solarized light everywhere. It sounds silly because everyone likes using a dark theme but I do it on purpose because I'm often coding from a bus stop or somewhere else outside. With a light theme it's much easier to see the screen even with full sun and glare on the screen. This is not possible with the dark theme.

I also have glare coming through a window at work that is in a new office and so there's no window blinds yet. The solarized light theme helps me continue to be able to see what's on my screen no matter what's happening and I appreciate that.

I'll switch back to a dark theme if I need to when I'm on a long trip and it's at night and I'm in the car so I don't disturb the driver with my screen.

I like that I can switch back and forth with using the same theme and that the light theme is so well thought out.

wwkeyboard• 4 years ago

I use the same, solarized light is surprisingly easy to read when sitting on a patio or at a coffee shop.

sciuromorpha_• 4 years ago

Slight tangent, but you're OFTEN coding from a bus stop?! Why?

djha-skin2• 4 years ago

Because I commute home on a bus. Public transportation is part of my daily commute and I like coding in my spare time.

tasuki4• 4 years ago

I too use Solarized Light. Apart from better readability outside, another reason for me to use the light theme is that many other things I look at use a light theme (eg HN), and switching between my terminal/ide with a dark theme and a browser with (usually) light websites was jarring.

vidarh3• 4 years ago

Almost everything has a dark theme for me, including HN - sites I use regularly which don't have their own dark themes will get overridden with Minimalist.

abraxas• 4 years ago

This resembles the colour theme of NEdit on Irix as I remember it from the mid nineties. Hmm, I got nostalgic saying this. Now I'm going to hunt the exact replica of that theme.

JRKrause• 4 years ago

Roughly translated Solarized over to Altium years ago if you're into that kind of thing: https://github.com/JohnKrause/Altium-Solarized

acedTrex• 4 years ago

This is my daily driver in every editor/ide. I make custom themes for the small places i want to tweak the colors

Adaptive3• 4 years ago

Developer of Solarized here. Glad that it continues to be a popular design. I've let the github languish and regret that. Luckily since it's just a color scheme the website and info on github has been enough for it to continue to propagate.

There have been plenty of other color schemes that I think it's safe to say have been inspired by Solarized and this is very satisfying to see. Many of them have done a better job at thinking through the git structure of their projects :)

tasuki4• 4 years ago

Many of them have done a better job at thinking through the git structure of their projects :)

Perhaps so. I've attempted to find some other color scheme. The most significant color scheme change I was able to stomach during the last ten years was from Solarized Dark to Solarized Light. Thank you <3

teucris• 4 years ago

Thanks so much for Solarized. Really changed the way I think about syntax highlighting and UI! Have you run common color/font configurations from Solarized through WCAG’s contrast checking tools? As I create more and more UIs I’ve become increasingly aware of contrast for accessibility and I was wondering what your thoughts were in this regard.

Adaptive3• 4 years ago

I didn't run Solarized through WCAG when designing it (I don't believe that was around when I was designing it, though I could be wrong) but I did design it to enable high contrast use (this is mentioned on the site but sometimes overlooked in implementations). The highest contrast base tones as background / foreground colors (base03+base3) do pass with a 13.91:1 ratio. In "low contrast" mode, Solarized passes all but WCAG AAA with a value of 4.74:1.

As my eyes age I often use Solarized in higher contrast configuration, so I'm sensitive to this issue.

Adaptive3• 4 years ago

Two things I want to add (better as a comment than edit):

1) I don't use Solarized everywhere religiously. I use it a LOT, no surprise. Still my preferred color scheme in most editing, terminal, code situations. But I am happy to use other well designed colorschemes in various contexts (writing, task management apps, etc.). Even when Solarized is available, sometimes variety is what's called for.

2) Solarized was designed to enable the colors to be used in high contrast modes as well. As my eyes age I sometimes will apply the colorscheme in a higher contrast mode. This adaptability is sometimes overlooked but it is inherent and intentional to the design.

pw201• 4 years ago

Thanks. Vim links on your page appear to be broken, btw.

wyclif• 4 years ago

Heads up, the Vim link on the Solarized landing page is 404 at the moment.

sriharis• 4 years ago

Thank you! :) I love solarized.

sorcercode• 4 years ago

I moved from Solarized to Monokai Pro. And it’s hard been to switch out to any other theme.

Monokai was Sublime’s default but I urge folks to specifically look at the Pro version here. https://monokai.pro/

foozed2• 4 years ago

Same for me. I've been using monokai and, since it came out, monokai pro. Every year or so I look at what new themes are out there and try the popular ones for a bit but nothing hits that sweet spot of aesthetically pleasing and functional so well for me.

blastro• 4 years ago

Solarized dark for me, and I boost the blue tones in the background colors. Love it. Thank you!

AdmiralAsshat• 4 years ago

Can anyone speak to the origin of the name? I had heard that the color scheme resembled the color choices on Solaris workstation terminals, but that origin seems to be erroneous.

Solarized

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