blomarchy/docs/themes.md

Themes

A theme is a directory under themes/ holding at minimum a colors.toml. blob-theme-set <name> stages it, renders every template against it, and retints the running desktop.

What a theme can ship

File	Used by
colors.toml	required; the palette everything else derives from
backgrounds/	the background switcher; a theme without one keeps the current wallpaper
shell.lock.toml	lock screen surface tokens
neovim.lua	the editor colorscheme
icons.theme	GTK icon theme name
preview.png, unlock.png, preview-unlock.png	theme and lock previews

colors.toml

Named keys are preferred: background, foreground, accent, muted, selection, the eight base colors, and their bright_ variants. The pywal color0..color15 form also works and is resolved through the same cascade: color0 is the background, color4 is blue, color5 is magenta.

That cascade lives in blob-theme-color, and Commons/Color.qml mirrors it so the shell and the CLI never disagree about what a slot means.

Templates

Each rendered file is picked up differently: foot.ini and kitty.conf by an include in the shipped terminal config, hyprland.lua through Hyprland's Lua module path, shell.toml and chromium.theme read straight from the state directory, and btop.theme, neovim.lua, gtk.css and starship.toml through symlinks the installer makes into those apps' own config trees.

default/themed/*.tpl are rendered per theme into ~/.local/state/blob/current/theme/. Eleven ship: foot, kitty, btop, chromium, hyprland, the screenshare picker, neovim, shell.toml, zen, gtk.css, and starship.toml.

An app picks its colors up in one of two ways. Most include the generated file directly, so nothing has to run:

include ~/.local/state/blob/current/theme/kitty.conf

Zen does the same through a CSS import in userChrome.css. The rest are pushed by a short applier listed in post_theme_commands inside blob-theme-set: blob-theme-foot, blob-theme-browser, blob-restart-terminal, blob-restart-btop, blob-hypr-restart, blob-theme-gtk.

GTK apps

Nautilus and the other GTK apps read two things. The palette comes from gtk.css, linked into both ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css, which redefines the libadwaita named colors (window_bg_color, headerbar_bg_color, accent_bg_color and the rest) so a stock Adwaita app is drawn in the theme's own colors. The light or dark preference comes from blob-theme-gtk, which reads the theme's mode and sets org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme and gtk-theme through gsettings.

The preference applies to running apps immediately; the CSS is read at startup, so an app that was already open keeps its old colors until it is restarted.

Adding a template for another app means dropping a .tpl in default/themed/ and, if it cannot include a file, adding an applier to that list.

The prompt

starship.toml is linked to ~/.config/starship.toml. It carries a [palettes.blob] block built from the theme - accent, foreground, muted, success, warning, error - and every style in the file names one of those rather than a literal color, so the prompt moves with the theme. Starship reads its config on each prompt, so a theme change shows up on the next command, in shells that are already open.

starship init bash runs from session/bashrc, which install.sh sources from ~/.bashrc with a single line. That file returns immediately in a non-interactive shell, so it cannot disturb scp or rsync, and it also sources session/env-bootstrap so blob is on PATH in any interactive shell.

The three ways to set a theme

Command	Does
blob theme menu	pick from the bundled and local sets
blob theme set <name>	apply one by name
blob wallpaper set <image>	extract a palette from a wallpaper with pywal, fix flat palettes with blob-theme-contrast, and apply it as blob-dynamic
blob theme share <link>	fetch a shared palette and apply it as blob-dynamic

Aether is also installed and does the same job with a GUI. To have its palettes land where these do, add Blob as a custom app in Aether with a template writing colors.toml into ~/.local/state/blob/current/theme/ and a post-apply hook calling blob-theme-refresh.

Bundled themes

Twenty-two came across from upstream, plus flats and pitch-dark. Their backgrounds/ directories are empty on purpose: the upstream images were Omarchy branding, and ~/wallpapers holds 103 of your own. A theme with no background of its own leaves the current wallpaper alone.

Because of that, a machine with no wallpaper yet would get none from the theme either. The installer covers the gap: it symlinks ~/wallpapers to the checkout, applies flats, and points the background symlink at the first image it finds. See install.md.