
Solarized - Color scheme for vim, mutt, terminal emulators - lamnk
http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized
======
daleharvey
Its really rare to see that much thought going into the aesthetics of
stereotypically "geeky" applications like vim and terminals, even the website
looks entirely different from pretty much every website I have seen around
these tools

its a refreshing change, awesome work

~~~
Adaptive
Thanks very much. Looking back at my early hg repos on this project I refined
it for about six months.

As an aside. I have a nominal post in my head contrasting the development and
refinement of a colorscheme like this vs the infamous 41 shades of blue. There
is room for refinement and testing in design, but I think it has to be coupled
with a clear design goals and opinions.

~~~
edambauskas
Thank you for the work!

It would be very interesting to learn about the methods you used to create
this.

Are you planning to create a palette with more shades? Some time ago I needed
lighter Tango tones and created this extended palette:
<http://emilis.info/other/extended_tango/>

------
lamnk
Please share your favorite color scheme(s) !

My favorite for gvim/MacVim is molokai:
<http://winterdom.com/2008/08/molokaiforvim> , seconded by vividchalk when i'm
on the terminal: <https://github.com/tpope/vim-vividchalk>

Haven't found any good color scheme for iterm2 yet. Currently i'm using
thayer: <http://ecto-plazm.deviantart.com/gallery/>

~~~
gurraman
I wrote my own scheme:

[https://github.com/strange/dotfiles/blob/master/.vim/colors/...](https://github.com/strange/dotfiles/blob/master/.vim/colors/strange.vim)

Python: <http://files.pipsq.com/strange/python.png> Erlang:
<http://files.pipsq.com/strange/erlang.png>

~~~
phaylon
I just tried this with Perl, and it looks great (the fold-column's a bit
bright, but I don't have that on by default). Have you thought about uploading
it to vim.org?

~~~
gurraman
Thank you. Will do.

~~~
gurraman
Done.

<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3534>
<https://github.com/strange/strange.vim>

------
tptacek
So, my mind is blown that you put so much effort into designing a color
scheme, and thanks, but maybe put the img/ directory in your git repo
somewhere else, so that a git pull of a color scheme doesn't take 50(!) megs.

~~~
Adaptive
I was afraid that would be a pain for people, sorry! You're right, I need to
do this. There is a reason, which is that the exact same repo does double duty
as the webpage (via Hakyll). It's super convenient because I have hakyll
process the README out into an index.html (pulling webserver local imgs, so
there is some sed magic).

I may try to break out the images as another subtree or make a website
subtree. It was lower on my list of priorities, but clearly a pain to others
cloning/forking. I'll try to sort it before beta2.

------
xiaomai
I haven't looked into how one can export gnome-terminal color palettes yet,
but if anyone else is interested, I think these are the correct settings in
gconf:

    
    
        /apps/gnome-terminal/palette: #070736364242:#D3D336368282:#B5B589890000:#CBCB4B4B1616:#2A2AA1A19898:#6C6C7171C4C4:#858599990000:#EEEEE8E8D5D5:#00002B2B3636:#D3D301010202:#58586E6E7575:#65657B7B8383:#838394949696:#26268B8BD2D2:#9393A1A1A1A1:#FDFDF6F6E3E3
        /apps/gnome-terminal/background_color: #00002B2B3636
        /apps/gnome-terminal/foreground_color: #65657B7B8383
    

_Edit_ : Ok, I pulled down the source for gnome-terminal since I couldn't find
a way to export/import color schemes. The color palettes are all hard-coded,
so that is unfortunate :(.

~~~
xiaomai
Ok, I think I had this wrong and it looks like I've hit a limit on editing my
post. Here's the right values (I hope):

(All values are in /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default):

    
    
        palette: #070736364242:#D3D301010202:#858599990000:#B5B589890000:#26268B8BD2D2:#D3D336368282:#2A2AA1A19898:#EEEEE8E8D5D5:#00002B2B3636:#CBCB4B4B1616:#58586E6E7575:#65657B7B8383:#838394949696:#6C6C7171C4C4:#9393A1A1A1A1:#FDFDF6F6E3E3
        background_color: #00002B2B3636
        foreground_color: #65657B7B8383

~~~
Tharkun
And here's the Light version:

palette: #070736364242:#D3D301010202:#858599990000:#B5B589890000:#26268
B8BD2D2:#D3D336368282:#2A2AA1A19898:#EEEEE8E8D5D5:#00002B2B363
6:#CBCB4B4B1616:#58586E6E7575:#65657B7B8383:#838394949696:#6C6
C7171C4C4:#9393A1A1A1A1:#FDFDF6F6E3E3

background_color: #FDFDF6F6E3E3

foreground_color: #00002B2B3636

(Same palette, just different FG and BG colours)

------
julian37
Someone started porting it to Emacs:

[https://github.com/sellout/solarized/tree/master/emacs-
color...](https://github.com/sellout/solarized/tree/master/emacs-color-theme-
solarized)

~~~
daleharvey
the emacs port seems a bit too low contrast

<http://dropup.net/lz64u0ctpcge.png.html>

~~~
sanityinc
After investigating this (and raising the aforementioned Emacs bug), I've
concluded that sRGB hex colors - as used by Ethan - are simply not the right
hex colors to enter in Emacs in order to get the desired results. Instead,
Emacs apparently works with Generic RGB values, and after some laborious
conversion calculations in Apple's "ColorSync Utility", I got the right
results:

<https://github.com/purcell/color-theme-sanityinc-solarized>

The color fix will probably get into sellout's repo, so interested parties
should prefer that one over mine.

~~~
spacemanaki
That's awesome! Thank you!

------
moe
I don't like this scheme and I don't buy the pseudo-science blurb. It's based
on shades of blue. Our eyes are the least sensitive to blue. And what's up
with the red and pink, is this some cruel joke?

I'll stick with Zenburn[1].

[1] <http://slinky.imukuppi.org/zenburn/>

~~~
bmj
I was a dedicated IR_Black user (in both VIM and Visual Studio), and didn't
think highly of this at first. But after about an hour, it's grown on me. If I
can scrape together some time, I'll throw together a VS2010 color
scheme/theme.

~~~
Derbasti
Please please do that! I for one would love to have this scheme in VS2010!

~~~
bmj
Not mine, but....

<http://studiostyl.es/schemes/solarized-dark>

~~~
Derbasti
Awww, awesome!

------
brianr
I don't know about the rest of you, but my eyes literally started to hurt when
I read the text on that page, presumably because of the color of the text v.
background. Doesn't bode well for using it in vim...

Maybe it looks better on a different monitor? (I have a Samsung LCD.)

~~~
bricestacey
You may need to enable ClearType.

If on Windows XP. Display Properties > Appearance > Effects

~~~
brianr
I'm on Mac OSX; is there an equivalent?

~~~
epochwolf
For Snow Leopard: Open System Preferences, go to Appearance, and uncheck "Use
LCD font smoothing when available"

------
kunalb
I found the theme rather comfortable for using in the terminal; however I set
TERM=xterm-256color so that vim would also pick up the light colour
scheme—there seemed to be some issues with the background colour on gnome-
terminal/Ubuntu.

Thanks!

~~~
Adaptive
When I was brave enough to test outside of urxvt and iterm2/terminal.app, it
seemed that terminal emulators are all over the place in terms of background
color support in vim terminal mode.

You might have tried this already (and it might not actually be related to
your issue), but there is a variable you stick in your vimrc (let
g:solarized_termtrans=1) to force it to take the background of your terminal
emulator (useful only if you are running with the solarized colors in terminal
mode).

I should come up with a some recommendations on setting TERM to ensure proper
colorscheme support, but that way lies madness (for me at least).

------
stevejalim
I don't mean to sound particularly thick here, but is there a way to apply
these colours to my OSX Terminal too? I've installed the bundle for
Terminal.app, and they look lovely in emacs, but can I use them in my general
bash environment, too?

~~~
streeter
Yes, the directions are on GitHub:

[https://github.com/altercation/solarized/tree/master/osx-
ter...](https://github.com/altercation/solarized/tree/master/osx-terminal.app-
colors-solarized)

Once you've activated that theme in Terminal.app's preferences, all your
colors in the shell will use the colors defined in the colorscheme. So red
will be the red in the colorscheme, blue -> blue, etc.

~~~
stevejalim
Thanks - seems to be working a treat here. Cheers!

------
mark_story
Fantastic work. If I happen upon some spare time I'll try and port it for
TextMate users.

~~~
_frog
Please do, I'd really appreciate it.

~~~
mark_story
I've got a start going in <https://github.com/markstory/solarized>

~~~
larssmit
Great work, Mark! I see you're progressing well with the TextMate themes.

~~~
tombot
Hey,

I've forked Mark's version and added a bunch of specific styles for the Light
version, specifically a lot of rules for PHP and CSS.

It's not 100% yet, but it's already the best TextMate theme I've ever used.

<https://github.com/deplorableword/solarized>

------
pyre
Anyone get a chance to test out how this looks with vimdiff? That's one area
that usually ends up looking fugly b/c the theme creator neglected to look at
it. Other areas that are typically neglected (though not in this case): code
folding, split buffer dividers.

~~~
ilikepi
Here's a vimdiff sample from the rvm repo...

<http://i.imgur.com/IMdt5.png>

------
gmaster1440
Make it for TextMate ;)

------
aidenn0
It would be nice to have a script that would start with this as a base, but
let you tune the contrast. I like the theme, but would like more contrast than
this (I use small fonts, and I really feel like more contrast is necessary
when doing so).

~~~
Adaptive
fwiw, there is a high contrast option in the vim colorscheme (let
g:solarized_contrast="high").

I'm working on cleaning up some of the build scripts that generated specific
files (the mutt directory has an ugly shell script as an example, there are
better ways of course).

------
redsparrow
I was interested in seeing what the colour palettes might look like in the
real world. Here's are the some multicolr searches for the 5-colour palettes:

[http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=073642,586e75,8394...](http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=073642,586e75,839496,93a1a1,d30102);
[http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=002b36,073642,586e...](http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=002b36,073642,586e75,657b83,b58900);
[http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=657b83,93a1a1,eee8...](http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=657b83,93a1a1,eee8d5,fdf6e3,268bd2);
[http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=657b83,839496,93a1...](http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=657b83,839496,93a1a1,eee8d5,cb4b16);
[http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=073642,93a1a1,eee8...](http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=073642,93a1a1,eee8d5,d33682,6c71c4);

A search with just the base colours:

[http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=002b36,073642,586e...](http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=002b36,073642,586e75,657b83,839496,93a1a1,eee8d5,fdf6e3);

~~~
Adaptive
Man, I love those sets. Hadn't used that site before but it's awesome. Very
nice to see the stark ocean and ink in water in the last set. Not too far off
from the deep ocean feel I was targeting during design.

Thanks. Great links.

------
flexterra
My favorite vim color scheme is two2tango. Here's a preview
<http://cl.ly/2Y0v251z0A29203K3d3D>

------
varikin
I made a Solarized dark theme for XCode 4. I used the Vim definition as a
guide, though varied it a little while staying within the color palette.

[https://github.com/varikin/solarized/tree/master/xcode4-colo...](https://github.com/varikin/solarized/tree/master/xcode4-colors-
solarized)

------
gnufs
I would really love to have emacs, gnome-terminal and gedit themes made out of
this color scheme.

------
cycojesus
any volunteer to submit it for emacs24 @ <http://elpa.gnu.org/themes/> ?

~~~
cycojesus
Did it @ [https://github.com/cycojesus/emacs/raw/master/solarized-
them...](https://github.com/cycojesus/emacs/raw/master/solarized-theme.el)
[https://github.com/cycojesus/emacs/raw/master/solarized-
ligh...](https://github.com/cycojesus/emacs/raw/master/solarized-light-
theme.el)

------
argleblargle
Is anybody willing to explain how to switch between light and dark? I can't
seem to understand the scss snippet that he gives. Apparently, you only have
to switch 4 colors, It would be nice to know what those colors were.

~~~
Adaptive
I'll be expanding the webpage to detail that, but essentially:

base03 = background base02 = background highlight base01 = background data
(comments, etc.) base0 = normal text

The scheme was designed to allow for: base1 = optional bold/emphasis

Just swap the zeros (initially I was using minus/plus, e.g. base-1 and base+1
but this isn't usable across all apps) to swap dark and light modes. There is
a good example of this in the vim script as well as the sass snippet (and the
mutt compile script if you are a glutton for ugly bash scripts).

base3 = light background base2 = dark background etc.

You shouldn't need to do any of this manually, however. The vim script has a
light/dark mode built in and where there isn't a way to toggle modes I am
distributing light and dark versions (the terminal color schemes).

~~~
argleblargle
Thanks! I coulden't find a light version of the Xresources script though,
that's why I was wondering about switching.

------
iwjames
Very nice! It is indeed amazing how much thought and effort was put into this,
and it is appreciated. At some point, I'll have to convert for Visual Studio
use if someone doesn't beat me to it.

------
PonyGumbo
Am I the only coder who doesn't like working with light text on a dark
background? I have 20/20 vision, and I find it really uncomfortable to use
these.

~~~
grayrest
My theory is that it depends on when/where you normally work. If you have a
tendency to code at night or in dark rooms, dark on light is very bright. At
least, that's why I go light on dark.

~~~
PonyGumbo
That makes sense. I work from home in a room that's all windows.

------
lbolla
I tried to install the iTerm2 colorscheme and also the vim colorscheme, but
they look nowhere near the screenshots. Anyone having issues like this?

~~~
landhar
My vim renders everything way darker (or perhaps is just that there is not as
much contrast) than in the screenshots. I double checked that I am using
xterm-256color (and also checked against rxvt-unicode-256color). It's too bad,
I really like how it looks in your screenshots, but in my computer not so
much...

------
rane
I love the effort put into this, but somehow the background is way too light
for my taste, in vim the colorscheme is kind of bland.

------
bricestacey
I cannot seem to get the colors to render properly on Snow Leopard, using
Terminal.app, and vim. Anyone else have any trouble but get it to work?

I installed the thing as instructed. I installed SIMBL and the SIMBL plugin,
installed Solarized Dark Terminal.app theme, installed vim using pathogen, and
set .vimrc with the additional g:solorized_termcolors=16 option.

~~~
mduvall
Go to Applications > Utilities, right-click on Terminal.app and set 32-bit
mode. Hope that helps!

------
aperiodic
The 64-bit TerminalColours SIMBL plugin that's linked to in the README doesn't
play nicely with binaryage's 64-bit Visor plugin, for some reason. However,
Evan Phoenix's fork[1] works perfectly for me.

[1] <https://github.com/evanphx/terminalcolours/downloads>

------
Luyt
A bit too much color according to my taste - I like a more subdued color
scheme, as seen in [http://www.michielovertoom.com/pictures/kwrite-
textanalyse.p...](http://www.michielovertoom.com/pictures/kwrite-
textanalyse.png) (All black on lightgray, strings dark gray, and prussian blue
comments).

~~~
lovskogen
A norwegian file! Tekstanalyse. Why are the comments in Dutch?

~~~
Luyt
It was a prototype I made for a prospective client. I sometimes use Dutch
comments (and variable names) in such a case. Btw, 'Tekstanalyse' is also a
Dutch word.

------
antihero
It looks nice, is there a tmTheme file?

Currently I use TwilightMod, which is as the name suggests, a modification of
Twilight.

This is what it looks like: <http://i.imgur.com/u802t.png>

Get it here <https://gist.github.com/809720>

------
swaits
Does this work in the console (vim)? I currently have desert256 working nicely
in iTerm (xterm-256color). I'm away from my computer or I'd test it myself.
Thanks! Never seen anyone put this much effort into a color scheme! I actually
feel like I personally owe it to you to give this a shot.

~~~
lloeki
Yes, but the 256 mode is actually an approximation of the real color theme.
For exact colors you have to set up the 16 ansi colors of your terminal to the
right colors and set a var in vimrc. See the docs for details.

------
retrovirus
Any chance for gedit and gnome terminal versions? Fantastic scheme, would
donate my kidney for a gedit port

~~~
jdorenbush
[https://github.com/mukashi/solarized/tree/master/gedit-
color...](https://github.com/mukashi/solarized/tree/master/gedit-colors-
solarized)

------
john2x
I made a simple Pygments version[1] for use on my website. I immediately
thought it was perfect for my site, but I'm sticking to molokai for Vim.
Thanks!

[1]: <https://bitbucket.org/john2x/solarized-pygment>

------
neurolysis
When I use this in my .Xdefaults, my terminal emulator (urxvt) goes hot pink (
[http://ompldr.org/vODRtMg/2011-04-05-165103_1024x600_scrot.p...](http://ompldr.org/vODRtMg/2011-04-05-165103_1024x600_scrot.png)
), any ideas?

~~~
leif
mine goes all blue, it's awful and I haven't found anyone with this problem.
Looks great in vim but it's unusable for urxvt/xterm (and also emacs).

edit: <http://imgur.com/OMjdR>

~~~
neurolysis
Might have a go later at making one that works with urxvt, hopefully that
should get it working with xterm.

With that said, if it's not working with urxvt/xterm, what _is_ the Xdefaults
working with?

~~~
leif
nothing, got a response on twitter and he said he borked it but will fix next
release

------
leif
the bold colors are bad, this makes most of my terminal apps annoying as hell
(ncmpcpp, byobu, aptitude, htop)

for one thing, at least one of the bold text colors is the same as the
background, this makes this text not even show up when it's present

it would be nice if not for this

------
JulianMorrison
I really don't get the terminal color assignments. Why are the brfoo colors
set to grey?

------
streeter
Anybody know of a TextMate port?

~~~
tombot
Yep, come and help finish it :)

<https://github.com/deplorableword/solarized>

------
jzawodn
Any chance of publishing the Xresources version (or at least hex codes in that
file) for the "white" version?

~~~
zaph0d
It's here -
[https://github.com/altercation/solarized/blob/master/xresour...](https://github.com/altercation/solarized/blob/master/xresources-
colors-solarized/Xresources)

~~~
jzawodn
That's the dark version.

------
bloom
It's a remarkable work. Although, on the dark background, the red and the
magenta colors are too saturated.

------
meemo
Wow. Beautiful colors. Beautiful site. Very impressed by how much effort the
author has put into this.

------
maayank
Any chance someone can pull an Eclipse Color Theme version? (pretty please :)

~~~
oh_no_my_eyes
check it
[http://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/?list=all&q=solar](http://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/?list=all&q=solar)

~~~
maayank
Could be that I'm missing something, but the dark versions don't seem to be
the same as in solarized: [http://ethanschoonover.com/img/solarized/solarized-
screen-ja...](http://ethanschoonover.com/img/solarized/solarized-screen-java-
dark.png)

------
freedrull
Does the font on the website look extremely blurry for anyone else...?

------
sashthebash
Am I the only person on HN that just happily uses the default color schemes
that comes with editors?

~~~
freiheit
Just about, yes.

------
GrandMasterBirt
Request for intellij impl.

