docsusage

Light, dark and auto

Every 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.

on this page

Switch the mode
How auto works
Where the light mode comes from
In your editor

Switch the mode

❯ ttheme light  # dark text on a light background
❯ ttheme dark  # light text on a dark background
❯ ttheme auto  # the system's appearance, followed as it changes

A switch repaints every open tab, whether you set its palette or not, in every terminal you wired, and moves each palette's pictures to the new mode. alt+c in ttheme has the same setting as its Mode row, and init asks for it the first time.

How auto works

auto follows the appearance a wired terminal reports:

Terminal	Hears a change
Ghostty	from the system, or its own `window-theme`, in any tab at its prompt
iTerm2	from the system, through ttheme's profiles, which carry both modes
kitty, WezTerm	from the system, through ttheme's watcher and module

It is offered only where one of these is wired. Once one of them hears a change, every terminal you wired switches with it, Warp and Terminal.app included. A change made while every tab was busy is heard at the next prompt. When nothing reports it, auto starts from the system's setting.

Where the light mode comes from

The official palettes carry both modes in their files, each passing the same contrast checks. A marketplace palette made in one mode gets the other by the same rules: each color keeps its hue, its lightness moves to the other side, and the colors that identify the character are kept apart.

Your tuning belongs to the mode it was made in, so a palette can be tuned differently in light and dark.

In your editor

Neovim asks the terminal for its background when it starts and sets background to match, so a colorscheme with light and dark variants follows the palette's mode.