Omarchy Theme Builder

A template-based theme builder for creating consistent desktop themes across multiple applications for Omarchy

Quick Start

# Build and install the example theme
./omarchy-theme-build themes/desert-twilight --install

# Create your own theme
mkdir themes/my-theme
cp themes/desert-twilight/colors.sh themes/my-theme/
# Edit themes/my-theme/colors.sh with your colors
# Add background images to themes/my-theme/ 
./omarchy-theme-build themes/my-theme --install

Why?

• For quickly creating a custom color palette that complements your favorite photo or illustration you wish to set as wallpaper.
• or just as a starting point for further refinement and customization.

How It Works

1. Theme Folders

Each theme lives in its own folder under themes/ containing:

• colors.sh - Color definitions (required)
• Background images (optional) - Any .jpg, .png, .webp files

Example theme included:

• themes/desert-twilight/ - Warm sandstone theme + Wadi Rum at night background (photo © jg-k)

2. Build Script

Generate theme files from a theme folder:

./omarchy-theme-build themes/desert-twilight       # Build theme
./omarchy-theme-build themes/my-theme --light      # Build with light mode
./omarchy-theme-build themes/my-theme --install    # Build and install to Omarchy

Options:

• --light / -l: Creates a light.mode file in output
• --install / -i: Installs theme to ~/.config/omarchy/themes/ and switches to it
• --help / -h: Shows usage information

3. Template Processing

• Templates in templates/ contain placeholders like ${BG}, ${FG}, etc.
• The script uses envsubst to replace placeholders with color values
• Output is saved to output/THEME_NAME/
• Background images from theme folder are automatically copied

Usage Workflow

1. Create a new theme folder:

   mkdir themes/my-new-theme
   cp themes/desert-twilight/colors.sh themes/my-new-theme/
   # Edit themes/my-new-theme/colors.sh with your colors

2. Add background images (optional):

   cp ~/Pictures/my-wallpaper.jpg themes/my-new-theme/

3. Build and install the theme:

   ./omarchy-theme-build themes/my-new-theme --install

The --install flag will:

• Build the theme
• Copy it to ~/.config/omarchy/themes/
• Switch to the new theme automatically

Color Variables Reference

Core Colors

• BG - Main background color
• FG - Main foreground/text color

Terminal Palette

• BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW - Standard ANSI colors
• BLUE, MAGENTA, CYAN, WHITE - Standard ANSI colors

UI Elements

• ACCENT - Primary accent color (used for highlights, active elements)
• BORDER_ACTIVE - Active window/element borders
• BORDER_INACTIVE - Inactive window/element borders
• SELECTION_BG - Background for selected items
• CURSOR - Terminal cursor color

Icon Theme

• ICON_THEME - Yaru icon variant name
  • Options: Yaru, Yaru-blue, Yaru-dark, Yaru-magenta, Yaru-olive, Yaru-prussiangreen, Yaru-purple, Yaru-red, Yaru-sage, Yaru-wartybrown, Yaru-yellow

What It Does

Generates unified theme files for:

• Alacritty - Terminal emulator colors
• Btop - System monitor colors
• Hyprland - Window manager borders
• Hyprlock - Screen locker colors
• Icons - File manager icon theme
• Mako - Notification daemon styling
• Neovim - Text editor colors
• SwayOSD - On-screen display styling
• Walker - Application launcher theme
• Waybar - Status bar colors
• Chromium - Chromium background color
• Zed - Zed editor styling

Zed Theme Setup

Live reloading not working for Zed. For now, you can either set the theme manually in Zed, or modify omarchy-theme-set to update ~/.config/zed/settings.json.

Live reloading purely with symlinks to omarchy current thems has proven unsuccessful so far. It does not seem to track changes to the target file.

Neovim Disclaimer

I don't use vim and am not familiar with neovim extensions...