Very Dark Black Theme for Home Assistant

A Home Assistant dark mode theme that provides black or very dark backgrounds wherever possible along with a choice of primary colours.

✅ Features

This is a simple theme focused on providing a very dark mode look. It's designed to be clean and simple, with a choice of primary colours.

• Black Backgrounds: Black background applied everywhere.
• Primary Colour Choice: Various sub-themes with different foreground colours.
  • Cyan
  • Green
  • Red
  • Fuchsia
  • Orange
  • Purple
  • Indigo
  • Silver (Monochrome)
  • Black (Standard): A monochrome theme (this is the base the others are built on).
  • Black (Background Only): This is the "sub-base", but has to remain in the list. Black backgrounds, everything else is HA default.

📋 Requirements

• card-mod – Highly recommended. The theme will still work without this integration, but card-mod is used to polish fine UI details and ensure a consistent experience across all elements.

📊 Compatibility

To ensure all features (like custom scrollbars and border removals) work correctly, verify you meet these minimum requirements:

Dependency	Minimum Version	Reason
Home Assistant	2022.11.0	Required for ha-card border variables.
card-mod	3.0.0	Required for theme-level CSS injection.

The theme is fully usable from HA 2022.11 onwards. Newer versions have additional refinements:

• 2022.11+ — Core dark backgrounds, cards, sidebar, and text
• 2025.1+ — Inputs, dialogs, and modern card layouts
• 2026.4+ — Dynamic HSL colour scales

📸 Screenshots

Cyan	Fuchsia	Silver

Indigo	Orange	Red

✨ Installation

Prerequisites: Enable themes and install card-mod

1. Install card-mod via HACS or per the instructions on its GitHub page.

2. Add the following to your configuration.yaml file if not present (HA restart required):

frontend:
  themes: !include_dir_merge_named themes

Download Theme

HACS (Recommended)

1. Add this URL as a Custom Repository in HACS. https://github.com/PlayFaster/very-dark-black-ha-theme
   • Open HACS in Home Assistant
   • Click Custom repositories (⋮ menu)
   • Add repository URL and Type: Theme
2. Search for "Very Dark Black Theme" and click Download
3. Run the frontend.reload_themes action (Restart Home Assistant if configuration.yaml changes were made).

Manual Installation

1. Under the Home Assistant config folder, create a new folder named themes.
2. Copy the theme YAML file into it.
3. Run the frontend.reload_themes action (Restart Home Assistant if configuration.yaml changes were made).

Apply Theme

• Go to your Profile General tab (bottom left of screen) and change Theme under Browser Settings.

Automate Theme Changes

You can use a Home Assistant automation to change the theme at startup, or based on any other time or condition you wish.

Important: In the Profile General screen, you must keep "Use default theme" selected under the Theme settings. If you manually select a specific theme in your profile, the automation will not be able to override it.

Example automation to set the theme at startup:

alias: Set (Default) Theme at Startup
description: >-
  This automation allows you to set or change the default theme at Home Assistant Startup, provided you keep the Default Theme selected.


triggers:
  - trigger: homeassistant
    event: start
conditions: []
actions:
  - action: frontend.set_theme
    data:
      name: Black with Orange
      name_dark: Black with Orange
mode: single

🛠️ Development

For technical details on the YAML standards, icon logic, and Shoelace tokens used in this theme, see the Development Reference.

📝 Maintenance Status

This is a personal project. Support and updates are provided on a "best-effort" basis only. While I use this theme daily and aim to keep it functional with the latest Home Assistant releases, I cannot guarantee immediate fixes for issues or compatibility with all releases.

🤝 Acknowledgements & Thanks

• Inspired by these excellent themes - thank you!
  • Frosted Glass themes of @wessamlauf
  • Graphite themes of @TilmanGriesel
• Made possible by @thomasloven and the card-mod contributors.
• This project was developed with the assistance of AI to ensure code quality and adherence to best practices.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT License. For more details, see the license document.

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Questions or Issues? Visit the GitHub repository.