Why do Sublime Text 3 Themes not affect the sidebar

Question

I generally only use dark themes for coding  so it s really annoying that Sublime Text 3 s sidebar stays light themed whatever theme you apply   Does anyone know how to change this   My configuration  Mac OSX 10 10 1 Yosemite  Sublime Text 3 Stable Channel  Build 3065

User · Answer

You can manually change the sidebar style by editing Default.sublime-theme.

To do this, edit the “sidebar_tree”, “sidebar_heading” etc., classes in Packages/Theme - Default/Default.sublime-theme. You can override those defaults by putting this Default.sublime-theme inside the Packages/User folder.

From the Sublime Text menu, selecting “Preferences ? Browse Packages…” will take you to it.

User · Answer

You are looking for a Sublime UI Theme  which modifies Sublime s User Interface  e g   side bar   It s different from a Color Theme Scheme  which modifies only the code part of Sublime s window  I tested a lot of UI Themes and the one I liked the most was Theme - Soda  You can install it using Sublime s Package Control  To enable it  go to Preferences    Settings - User and add this line    theme    Soda Dark 3 sublime-theme     Here is a printscreen of my Sublime Text 3 with Soda Dark UI Theme and Twilight default Color Scheme

User · Answer

In Material theme 3 1 4 you can change theme like this  Tools- Metherial Theme- Material Theme Config  Its very easy

User · Answer

Here s the short version     sublime-theme files change the look of the UI including the Sidebar and File Tabs   Defining these are a tremendous pain  so save yourself a lot of time and install the Theme Menu Switcher package    Update  Sublime Text 3 has fundamentally changed the way Color Schemes and Themes work  and has broken many of the packages that were built to handle them  I can no longer confirm the accuracy of this post  nor the functionality of the packages mentioned herein because the Sublime developers have not fully explained the changes to the customization system nor addressed how to fix them  And  at the very best  they are far more difficult to change   At this point  this post should only be used as a reference to the differences between  themes  and  color schemes  in Sublime Text 2  as I myself have yet to successfully change a theme nor color scheme in Sublime Text 3   I will update this post as I can dedicate more time to unraveling this Sublime Customization Quagmire     Here s the long version    Figure 1  The difference between  Color Schemes  and  Themes  - In the Sublime Community these terms are often confused and used interchangeably   Changing the look of Sublime is a relatively difficult endeavor  for three main reasons    Poorly chosen terminology Misinformation in the Sublime Community Installation Nightmare   Terminology  There are 2 different sections of Sublime that can be customized     the editable region  the purple regions  the User Interface  the green regions    These use two different file types  and they do not accurately reflect the terminology    The  Why   of this decision is compatibility  and for brevity s sake I won t get into it here  but the fallout of this effort is      The file type called tmTheme does not affect the theme  it affects the Color Scheme    Color Schemes  highlighted in purple    affect the look of the editable region  more specifically  the editable characters  ie what color they are when highlighted or not highlighted  etc   relatively easy to produce Color Schemes are Mistakenly called  Themes  all over the Sublime Community    Themes  highlighted in green     sublime-theme files change the Theme  or the UI aspects of Sublime  difficult to produce It is difficult to find true Sublime Themes  compared to  Color Schemes    Misinformation  Many packages claim to change the Theme  but actually change the Color Scheme  This is usually because the people producing them don t know that  Theme  specifically refers to the UI    So another level of difficulty is finding a true  Theme  package  rather than Color Scheme   Even some legit websites do not correctly make a distinction between the two  which adds to the challenges  For instance  colorsublime com has a tutorial on changing the sublime  theme   but actually references the  Color Scheme  file type   tmTheme    Installation Pains  Themes and Color Schemes are hard to install and define  In fact  it s shocking how difficult the process is  The difficulty is further exacerbated with a fundamental change in installation and definition requirements in Sublime Text 3 that are not fully explained  which breaks many of the packages we once were reliant upon to change the Themes and Color Schemes   It requires installing an actual Theme package  good luck finding one by browsing Packages in Package Control   defining it in settings  and then restarting Sublime  And  if you did something wrong  Sublime will simply replace your user-defined theme setting with the default  Yes  you heard me right  without notice or error message  Sublime will overwrite your theme definition   But with Themes Menu Switcher All you need to do is go to Preferences   Theme and you ll see a list of all themes you have installed  You can also easily switch between themes without restarting Sublime    Here s a sample from the website   I have no affiliation with Theme Menu Switcher at all  I m just a fan   Again  Theme Menu Switcher does not work the same in Sublime Text 3  If you need to have a customized look  I recommend not to update to Sublime Text 3

User · Answer

Just install package Synced Sidebar Bg it will change the sidebar theme based on current color scheme But it seems that every time you change the color scheme sidebar will be changed after you open file Preferences sublime-settings

User · Answer

The best way to enhance your experience and change the sidebar and theme of the sublime text UI is to install two packages to control it    Install a theme that has UI inside its package  I use Agila Theme  dracula    Install Themes Menu Switcher package   After you ve installed those two  just change the color scheme  text editor   and then with the Theme Menu Switcher you ll switch to whatever UI you use   Remember  It s required that the theme you install to have UI inside the package

User · Answer

To Sidebar ceased to be white    Download default theme because it is not in the folder sublime link here by default sublime-Theme In sublime 3 preferences --     Browse package create a folder called  default theme  and put the downloaded file   if you installed the theme setUI  setUI file sublime-the theme is looking for the line with comment       sidebar    BG of selected files    and under it a string   layer0  opacity     target   0 0   speed   50 0   interpolation    smoothstep    replaceable target   0 0 -- gt  target   1 0

User · Answer

setting color scheme only sets the code pallet   setting theme sets the whole ST3 theme to the one you specify          theme    Nil sublime-theme        color scheme    Packages Theme - Nil Big Duo tmTheme

User · Answer

I first thought I was using SBT 3  then realized I was using version 2 still        I finally got the sidebar to be dark on Windows   I noticed that when I had my user settings theme set to  Soda Dark 3 sublime-theme  it would half-way work but you could not see the folder structure  So I decided to try the other option in the Theme - Soda folder without the  3  and it worked right away  This should work below in your Preferences   Settings - User file             theme    Soda Dark sublime-theme        color scheme    Packages Color Scheme - Default Monokai tmTheme

User · Answer

I had the same problem   Just set the theme in Preferences -  Settings     User by editing the json property called            Default theme      theme    Material-Theme sublime-theme        color scheme    Packages Material Theme schemes Material-Theme tmTheme      For Material theme that I use   It worked for me

User · Answer

I thought I would put a note here that explains a basic misconception for a lot of people who are using these Text Editors    Sublime Text in particular  or at least that s the one I use  so I don t know how it works for other editors    There are  Themes  and there are  Color Schemes   They are similar but affect different things   Themes  actively change the entire UI  and can include a Color Scheme if you set it up that way  This typically includes the sidebar  and can also include options for the file tabs  and some even include icons for the sidebar as well  And then we have  Color Schemes  which only change the coding windows and nothing else    not the Sidebar  nor the File tabs  etc    The confusion happens because some people call Color Schemes  Themes  which makes folks think that their  Theme  is going to change everything     when technically  it s just a color scheme    And an additional note  Themes don t automatically install for all users  When I install a Theme  I have to open my User preferences  under  preferences   Settings - User    and then you have to add the line which says something like    theme    Theme-Name sublime-theme      where  Theme-Name  is the name of your theme    This is different than just activating a color scheme  If you ve chosen a color scheme via the dropdown menus in Sublime Text  you will see a line in there like this    color scheme    Packages Color-Scheme-Name tmTheme     where  Color-Scheme-Name  is the name of your color scheme

User · Answer

The most recent version of Sublime has fixed this issue  click on Preferences  click on Theme select Adaptive sublime-theme  This will change the sidebar to a dark colored background

User · Answer

You need to restart Sublime completely in order for a theme to fully take effect  Just changing and saving Preferences sublime-settings or using a theme-changing plugin won t do it  You need to use  Q or Sublime Text - gt  Quit  not just close the window by clicking the red dot

User · Answer

One simple way to do this is    Go to Preferences -  Package Settings -  Your Theme Name -  Activation  In my case I installed Boxy Theme so the path will be  Preferences -  Package Settings -  Boxy Theme -  Activation  Then there will be a pop-up menu that will let you choose which type of the theme package you want to activate   Use up and down arrow so choose then press enter or simply click the one you want to choose    This is steps only applicable if the theme installed also customized the sublime text 3 sidebar    Hope it help anyone

[themes] Why do Sublime Text 3 Themes not affect the sidebar?

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