Themes

rozi themes both its own chrome (workbar, borders, titlebars, overlays) and the ANSI color palette used to render terminal content. Themes come from tui-lipan's Theme type: a built-in preset, the host-derived system theme, or a custom theme file.

Selecting a theme

There is a single knob. [theme].name is the active theme, chosen by name:

[theme]
name = "tokyo-night"

The name resolves in this order:

1. A custom theme file ~/.config/rozi/themes/<name>.toml, if it exists (custom files shadow built-ins of the same name).
2. The reserved name system (derive colors from the host terminal).
3. A built-in preset id.
4. Otherwise rozi warns and uses lipan.

Pick a theme at runtime with the Choose theme palette command. It groups System, dark presets, light presets, and every custom theme file in one fuzzy-searchable modal; the active theme is marked current. Selecting one applies it immediately and writes name back to the config.

Built-in presets

Preset id	Label
lipan (default)	Lipan
one-dark	One Dark
dracula	Dracula
nord	Nord
gruvbox-dark	Gruvbox Dark
catppuccin-mocha	Catppuccin Mocha
tokyo-night	Tokyo Night
solarized-dark	Solarized Dark
monokai	Monokai
solarized-light	Solarized Light
gruvbox-light	Gruvbox Light
tokyo-night-day	Tokyo Night Day
catppuccin-latte	Catppuccin Latte
catppuccin-frappe	Catppuccin Frappe
catppuccin-macchiato	Catppuccin Macchiato
rose-pine	Rosé Pine
rose-pine-moon	Rosé Pine Moon
rose-pine-dawn	Rosé Pine Dawn
kanagawa	Kanagawa
everforest	Everforest
ayu-dark	Ayu Dark
ayu-mirage	Ayu Mirage
ayu-light	Ayu Light
nightfox	Nightfox
nordfox	Nordfox
night-owl	Night Owl
material-palenight	Material Palenight
oxocarbon	Oxocarbon
zenburn	Zenburn

Preset ids are case-insensitive and accept a few aliases (e.g. onedark, tokyonight, solarized, gruvbox, and catppuccin). The latter two aliases resolve to the renamed gruvbox-dark and catppuccin-mocha presets.

ansi remains a valid config value for existing configurations, but is not shown in the picker. When system cannot query the host terminal's colors, rozi uses ANSI colors for that run and shows a warning. The configured name remains system, so probing is retried on the next launch.

Custom theme files

Drop as many tui-lipan theme TOML files as you like into ~/.config/rozi/themes/. Each file is a theme named by its stem, so ~/.config/rozi/themes/my-nord.toml is selected with:

[theme]
name = "my-nord"

Custom themes appear in the Choose theme picker alongside the built-ins. If a file cannot be read or parsed, rozi falls back to lipan and reports a warning (the file is still watched, so fixing it hot-reloads without a restart).

Inheriting from a preset with extends

A custom theme file does not need to define every color. Add extends at the top of the file to start from one of the built-in presets, then override only the fields you care about - everything else is inherited from that preset:

# ~/.config/rozi/themes/my-nord.toml
extends = "nord"

[accent]
fg = "#ff79c6"

extends accepts any built-in preset id (see Built-in presets), plus lipan. It is optional; a file with no extends inherits from lipan instead.

Every top-level Theme field can be overridden the same way, by name, and only the sub-fields you set are applied on top of the base - the rest of that field's value is inherited:

• Style fields: primary, accent, selection, text_selection, focus, hover, border, muted. Each is a table of fg, bg, bold, dim, italic, underline, reverse, strikethrough, underline_color, dim_amount, and tint.
• Palette fields: surface, status, file_icons, git_status, diff, document, syntax, input, text_area, document_view, hex_area, terminal, scrollbar, splitter.
• The single color border_active.

Colors accept hex ("#RRGGBB"), ANSI names ("cyan", "darkgray", ...), indexed(<0-255>), or rgb(r,g,b). Style-table fg/bg/underline_color fields additionally accept alpha via "#RRGGBBAA" or rgba(r,g,b,a) (alpha as 0.0..=1.0 or 0..=255); bare palette fields such as status and surface are opaque-only.

For example, a theme that keeps Dracula everywhere but swaps only the success/error status colors and brightens the active border. status.error and status.success also color blocked and finished pane alerts; an unreadable alert role falls back through status.warning to readable text:

extends = "dracula"
border_active = "#f8f8f2"

[status]
success = "#50fa7b"
error = "#ff5555"

Matching the host terminal's background

The easiest way to get this is the Background follows terminal toggle in Settings picker ([pane] background_follows_terminal in config, off by default). It pins surface.backdrop to the host terminal's background for whichever theme is active, without needing a custom theme file at all - see [pane] in the configuration reference.

The rest of this section covers doing the same thing by hand in a custom theme file, which is useful if you only want it for one specific theme rather than every theme you switch to.

The app's main background (the canvas behind panes and gaps, plus the fill behind unfocused pane frames) is surface.backdrop. Set it to the special value "backdrop" to make it inherit your terminal emulator's own background live, instead of a fixed color:

extends = "nord"

[surface]
backdrop = "backdrop"

"backdrop" is a sentinel, not a color. rozi resolves it once, at startup, to the actual background color it queries from your terminal emulator (the same probe the system theme uses), so every surface that reads surface.backdrop tracks your terminal's real background instead of a fixed theme color. When the query is unavailable (some terminals or headless runs), it falls back to the theme's surface.panel.

Resolving to a concrete color - rather than leaving the channel unset - is deliberate: the backdrop also feeds the terminal default background reported to OSC 11 background queries, embedded panes' default-background cells, and workbar badge text and end caps. A bare unset sentinel has no RGB, so those consumers used to collapse to pitch black (black pane spawns, black-based transitions in nested apps, unreadable workbar text). A queried color keeps all of them on your terminal's own background.

Because the value is a color snapshot taken at startup, a live wallpaper or blur behind your terminal is matched by color, not shown through the panes themselves. Switching your terminal theme at runtime does not re-probe; reload or restart rozi to pick up the new background.

Hot reload

While a custom theme is active, rozi watches its file and hot-reloads it on every change (powered by tui-lipan's theme-reload feature and ThemeWatcher). Edits are picked up live - chrome and terminal colors update without restarting. Reload errors are surfaced as toasts. Built-in presets and system have no backing file and so do not hot-reload; switch between them with the picker instead.

Terminal colors follow the theme

Terminal content is not painted with a single background color. rozi derives a full 16-color ANSI palette (plus default foreground/background) from the active theme and applies it to every pane's terminal screen. The mapping uses the theme's status colors (error / success / warning / info), accent, and file-icon colors for the base 8, with lightened variants for the bright 8.

This palette is re-applied whenever the theme changes - on a picker selection, on a custom theme hot-reload, at startup, and to every newly spawned pane - so terminal colors stay in sync with the chrome.

The ansi preset and system are the exceptions: they lean on the host terminal's own palette rather than a curated one, which is useful if you want rozi to blend into your existing terminal theme.