Themes

Gemini CLI supports a variety of themes to customize its color scheme and appearance. You can change the theme to suit your preferences via the /theme command or "theme": configuration setting.

Available themes

Gemini CLI comes with a selection of pre-defined themes, which you can list using the /theme command within Gemini CLI:

Dark themes:
- ANSI
- Atom One
- Ayu
- Default
- Dracula
- GitHub
- Solarized Dark
Light themes:
- ANSI Light
- Ayu Light
- Default Light
- GitHub Light
- Google Code
- Solarized Light
- Xcode

Changing themes

Enter /theme into Gemini CLI.
A dialog or selection prompt appears, listing the available themes.
Using the arrow keys, select a theme. Some interfaces might offer a live preview or highlight as you select.
Confirm your selection to apply the theme.

Note: If a theme is defined in your settings.json file (either by name or by a file path), you must remove the "theme" setting from the file before you can change the theme using the /theme command.

Theme persistence

Selected themes are saved in Gemini CLI’s configuration so your preference is remembered across sessions.

Custom color themes

Gemini CLI lets you create your own custom color themes by specifying them in your settings.json file. This gives you full control over the color palette used in the CLI.

How to define a custom theme

Add a customThemes block to your user, project, or system settings.json file. Each custom theme is defined as an object with a unique name and a set of nested configuration objects. For example:

{
  "ui": {
    "customThemes": {
      "MyCustomTheme": {
        "name": "MyCustomTheme",
        "type": "custom",
        "background": {
          "primary": "#181818"
        },
        "text": {
          "primary": "#f0f0f0",
          "secondary": "#a0a0a0"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Configuration objects:

text: Defines text colors.
- primary: The default text color.
- secondary: Used for less prominent text.
- link: Color for URLs and links.
- accent: Used for highlights and emphasis.
- response: Precedence over primary for rendering model responses.
background: Defines background colors.
- primary: The main background color of the UI.
- diff.added: Background for added lines in diffs.
- diff.removed: Background for removed lines in diffs.
border: Defines border colors.
- default: The standard border color.
- focused: Border color when an element is focused.
status: Colors for status indicators.
- success: Used for successful operations.
- warning: Used for warnings.
- error: Used for errors.
ui: Other UI elements.
- comment: Color for code comments.
- symbol: Color for code symbols and operators.
- gradient: An array of colors used for gradient effects.

Required properties:

name (must match the key in the customThemes object and be a string)
type (must be the string "custom")

While all sub-properties are technically optional, we recommend providing at least background.primary, text.primary, text.secondary, and the various accent colors via text.link, text.accent, and status to ensure a cohesive UI.

You can use either hex codes (e.g., #FF0000) or standard CSS color names (e.g., coral, teal, blue) for any color value. See CSS color names for a full list of supported names.

You can define multiple custom themes by adding more entries to the customThemes object.

Loading themes from a file

In addition to defining custom themes in settings.json, you can also load a theme directly from a JSON file by specifying the file path in your settings.json. This is useful for sharing themes or keeping them separate from your main configuration.

To load a theme from a file, set the theme property in your settings.json to the path of your theme file:

{
  "ui": {
    "theme": "/path/to/your/theme.json"
  }
}

The theme file must be a valid JSON file that follows the same structure as a custom theme defined in settings.json.

Example my-theme.json:

{
  "name": "Gruvbox Dark",
  "type": "custom",
  "background": {
    "primary": "#282828",
    "diff": {
      "added": "#2b3312",
      "removed": "#341212"
    }
  },
  "text": {
    "primary": "#ebdbb2",
    "secondary": "#a89984",
    "link": "#83a598",
    "accent": "#d3869b"
  },
  "border": {
    "default": "#3c3836",
    "focused": "#458588"
  },
  "status": {
    "success": "#b8bb26",
    "warning": "#fabd2f",
    "error": "#fb4934"
  },
  "ui": {
    "comment": "#928374",
    "symbol": "#8ec07c",
    "gradient": ["#cc241d", "#d65d0e", "#d79921"]
  }
}

Security note: For your safety, Gemini CLI will only load theme files that are located within your home directory. If you attempt to load a theme from outside your home directory, a warning will be displayed and the theme will not be loaded. This is to prevent loading potentially malicious theme files from untrusted sources.

Example custom theme

Using your custom theme

Select your custom theme using the /theme command in Gemini CLI. Your custom theme will appear in the theme selection dialog.
Or, set it as the default by adding "theme": "MyCustomTheme" to the ui object in your settings.json.
Custom themes can be set at the user, project, or system level, and follow the same configuration precedence as other settings.

Themes from extensions

Extensions can also provide custom themes. Once an extension is installed and enabled, its themes are automatically added to the selection list in the /theme command.

Themes from extensions appear with the extension name in parentheses to help you identify their source, for example: shades-of-green (green-extension).