Themes

A theme is three colours, matching the slots the interface uses:

Slot	Used for
dark	borders and inactive chrome
mid	secondary text
bright	accents, titles, the progress bar

That is deliberately the same shape the cover-derived palette produces, so a fixed theme and album colours are interchangeable everywhere.

Built in

gruvbox · nord · dracula · catppuccin · tokyonight · everforest · rosepine · solarized · matrix · mono

Plus cover, which takes the colours from the artwork. That is the default, and it is what kew does.

Switch at runtime from esc → options → theme. The choice is remembered.

Writing your own

Drop a TOML file into ~/.config/ytkew/themes/:

~/.config/ytkew/themes/ayu.toml

dark   = "#3d4751"   # borders and inactive chrome
mid    = "#b3b1ad"   # secondary text
bright = "#ffcc66"   # accents, titles, the progress bar

The file name is the theme name, and it appears in the options pane alongside the built-ins. Both #rrggbb and rrggbb are accepted; add name = "..." to use a name other than the file name.

Reusing a built-in name replaces it, so you can retune a shipped theme without patching ytkew. cover is reserved.

Note

Themes are read at startup, so restart after adding one. A file that does not parse is reported on startup and skipped — the rest still load.

Contrast

Whatever the palette, list text is held above a minimum brightness. Rows used to be drawn in the border colour, which is fine on solid black and close to unreadable on a translucent terminal — and a cover-derived palette can push that colour to nearly nothing.