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How to install ttheme, use and pin palettes, and make palettes of your own.

Getting started

  • InstallOne command wires ttheme into the terminals you use. It asks a few questions, shows every file it is about to change, and writes nothing until you say yes.
  • Your first paletteRun ttheme on its own. It opens Preview, where every palette you installed repaints the tab as the cursor lands on it, so you choose by looking.
  • What changed, and how to undo itinit adds one guarded line to each config it wires and keeps everything else in its own folder. Nothing outside that line is touched, and one command takes it all back out.

Usage

  • This tab, new tabs and the defaultEvery tab shows one palette at a time. You can use a palette in a single tab, set the palette new tabs open with, or let every new tab take the next character.
  • Pin to a folder or ssh hostA pin gives a folder, or an ssh host, its own palette. A tab shows it while it is there and takes back what it wore when it leaves.
  • Light, dark and autoEvery palette comes in a light and a dark mode. One setting picks the mode all of them show in, and auto follows your system's appearance as it changes.
  • PicturesA palette can carry a picture of its character behind your text. ttheme finds one on the image boards, cuts the character out, and keeps it faint enough that your text still passes the contrast checks.
  • Add and update palettesPalettes come from marketplaces. The official one ships with ttheme, and anyone can publish another from a GitHub repository. Browse adds and drops palettes; ttheme update brings new versions.

Creating palettes

  • Your own palettettheme new opens the palette editor on a blank palette. You tune twenty colors while a mock terminal shows them in a shell, an editor and a process monitor, and the contrast checks measure every color as you go.
  • Tune a paletteYou can change any palette's colors, an official one included, without making a copy. Your tuning is kept apart from the palette: just the colors you moved, laid over the colors its marketplace gives.
  • Share a linkA share link carries the palette itself, so nothing is uploaded or stored. The link opens the palette in the builder on ttheme.dev, and ttheme add installs it from there.
  • Publish a marketplaceA marketplace is a GitHub repository of palette files. Anyone can add it with one command, and their copies update when you push. There is nothing to build: ttheme reads the files as you pushed them.

Reference

  • CommandsEvery ttheme command, with its arguments, actions and options. This page is made from the same source as ttheme help all, so the two never disagree.
  • SettingsEvery setting ttheme reads, the values it takes and its default. This page is made from the same source as the comments in your config.zsh.
  • KeysEvery screen lists its own keys with ?, for the mode it is in. This page gathers them. Keys are written by name here; on a Mac the screens draw Apple's symbols instead (↩ for enter, ⎋ for esc, ⌃R for ctrl+r).
  • Terminal supportttheme wires eleven terminals, and every one of them repaints per tab. Nothing is emulated: a terminal that cannot express something does not get it.
  • Contrast checksThe contrast checks make sure a palette stays readable in a terminal: text against its background, and the colors programs use to mean something. This page lists each rule and the reasoning and sources behind it.