Themes

Twenty-five built-in presets, a picker with live preview, and per-color overrides for when a preset is nearly right.

The theme picker

cmd-alt-t (or Oxide → Select Theme…) opens a modal list. j/k — or the arrows, or ctrl-n/ctrl-p — move through it, repainting the whole window as you go, so you're judging the theme rather than a row of swatches. enter keeps it, esc puts back what you had.

Confirming writes preset = "…" into the [colors] section of your config file, preserving the rest of the file's formatting and comments.

Confirming replaces the entire [colors] block — individual color overrides are dropped, because they'd quietly defeat the theme you just picked. If you keep hand-tuned colors, edit preset in the file directly instead. With follow_system on, the picker instead sets only preset_dark or preset_light — whichever the Mac is showing right now — and leaves the rest of the block alone.

Following the system appearance

Two presets, and macOS decides which one is up: the moment the appearance flips, so does Oxide, in every pane and the chrome around them.

[colors]
follow_system = true
preset_dark   = "catppuccin-mocha"
preset_light  = "catppuccin-latte"

Either variant falls back to preset when unset; with nothing but follow_system = true, dark gets the default palette and light gets catppuccin-latte. Per-color overrides are shared: a cursor you set applies on top of whichever preset is active, so pick ones that read on both.

The presets

catppuccin-mocha

catppuccin-latte

gruvbox-dark

tokyonight

dracula

nord

solarized-dark

oxide

ethereal

everforest

flexoki-light

hackerman

kanagawa

last-horizon

lumon

lupine

matte-black

miasma

osaka-jade

retro-82

ristretto

rose-pine-dawn

solitude

vantablack

white

Preset	Notes
catppuccin-mocha	The default when no preset is set. Soft pastels on near-black.
catppuccin-latte	Light. The fallback when `follow_system` needs a light preset.
gruvbox-dark	Warm, retro, high contrast.
tokyonight	Cool blues and violets.
dracula	Saturated colors on slate.
nord	Muted arctic blues.
solarized-dark	The classic low-contrast teal.
oxide	Rust-toned — the palette this whole site is painted in.
ethereal	Peach text on deep midnight blue, with dusty pastels.
everforest	Soft greens and warm beige on slate. Easy on the eyes.
flexoki-light	Light. Inky colors on warm paper.
hackerman	Green-on-black terminal nostalgia, neon everything.
kanagawa	Muted ink-wash tones after Hokusai's wave.
last-horizon	Near-black with dusty rose and steel blue.
lumon	All blues, all the time. Your outie approves.
lupine	Light. Vivid violets and blues on off-white.
matte-black	Charcoal with amber and brick accents.
miasma	Earthy olive and brown on dark grey.
osaka-jade	Deep jade greens with a hot red accent.
retro-82	Eighties sunset: orange and teal on navy.
ristretto	Monokai Pro's coffee-brown variant.
rose-pine-dawn	Light. Rosé Pine's Dawn variant (Omarchy ships it as `rose-pine`).
solitude	Cool desaturated greys on near-black.
vantablack	Greyscale on pure black.
white	Light. Greyscale on pure white.

[colors]
preset = "gruvbox-dark"

Overriding individual colors

Any color you name wins over the preset, so you can start from one and adjust. Values are #rgb or #rrggbb.

[colors]
preset       = "nord"
background   = "#000000"   # darker than Nord's own
cursor       = "#e2725b"
selection_bg = "#4a3428"

The full set of keys:

Keys	Used for
background, foreground	The default cell colors, the drawer, and the status bar, which derive their shades from these.
cursor	The cursor, whatever its shape (see [cursor]). Copy mode's cursor is ANSI yellow.
selection_bg	Selected text, and the selected row in the drawer.
selection_fg	Text inside a selection. Unset by default, which keeps each cell's own colour; set it when `selection_bg` clashes with coloured output.
black … white	ANSI 0–7.
bright_black … bright_white	ANSI 8–15.

Colors reload live: save the file and the window repaints, no restart and no new tab. An unknown preset name doesn't break anything — Oxide keeps the current theme and shows a toast listing the valid names.

Transparency and blur

Not part of [colors], but the same conversation:

[window]
opacity = 0.92
blur    = true

opacity applies to the window background; blur frosts what's behind it. Text stays fully opaque.

What the UI derives

The drawer, tab bar, status bar, and search box aren't separately themeable — they're computed from the terminal palette. The drawer and status bar sit a shade darker than background, text is foreground dimmed toward it, directory icons use ANSI blue, as does the workspace chip, and the git branch is green until the tree goes dirty and then yellow. Change the palette and the chrome follows.