Julia EvansApr 9, 2025

i'm trying to articulate my approach to colours in the terminal and I guess it's:

1. make every program use the 16 ANSI colours, except for neovim, theme that with 24-bit colour because theming vim with ANSI colours is a pain
2. pick a terminal emulator theme I like for the ANSI colours
3. use “minimum contrast" in the terminal emulator to avoid having unreadable text because something chose a bad combo of ANSI colours for my theme

Show threadRasmus Kaj 🎼🦀Apr 9, 2025
@b0rk
Sounds like the aproach I'd like, but how "conceptual" can the 16 ansi colours be made? Is it possible to have things configured so I can switch between a light and a dark theme on the desctop -- including terminal windows -- and have things inside the terminal just work?
Show threadJulia Evans
@rkaj some terminal emulators definitely let you set a different light mode and dark mode theme, i’m not sure how to make vim adjust though
Apr 9, 2025 at 8:22pmWeb
Show threadmalbaApr 10, 2025

@b0rk @rkaj This program allegedly does that: https://github.com/f-person/auto-dark-mode.nvim/blob/master/lua/auto-dark-mode/init.lua

Seems they have neovim send a DBus request to figure out what the color is. Probably regular vim could do something similar. Vim's 'bg' settings' auto-detection doesn't get it right on my computer when I reset it as opposed to when I'm starting Vim which does make it get it right, so I am unsure whether Vim does this by default at all.

E: auto-dark-mode works on more than Linux
vim defaults to dark on startup, no matter what

auto-dark-mode.nvim/lua/auto-dark-mode/init.lua at master · f-person/auto-dark-mode.nvim

A Neovim plugin for macOS, Linux & Windows that automatically changes the editor appearance based on system settings. - f-person/auto-dark-mode.nvim

GitHub