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Themes & languages

φ should feel like your writing room — in the light or the dark, tinted the way you like, in the language you think in. All of this lives under Settings (⌘,) → Appearance.

Light, dark, or system​

Under Theme, set Appearance to Light, Dark, or System. System follows your Mac's appearance and switches with it — light by day, dark by night, automatically.

You can also flip the current mode without opening Settings: open the command palette (⌘P) and choose Cycle theme (system / light / dark), or use Toggle Theme in the View menu.

Color themes​

A color theme tints the interface — backgrounds, text, accents, the wiki-link color, code syntax colors, and so on. The light/dark mode above decides which side of a theme applies; the color theme decides the palette.

The built-in φ theme​

φ ships with one official theme, Phi: neutral grays with a pure white or black page. It's the default and is marked Official in the list. It can't be removed.

Installing a community theme​

Every theme other than Phi is a community theme — a small JSON file you install. It lives outside the app, in your themes folder, so adding or removing one never touches the application itself.

To install one:

  1. In Settings → Appearance → Color theme, click Install theme….
  2. Select the theme's .json file.

The theme appears in the list right away and applies when you select it. To see where themes are kept (for example to drop a file in by hand, or to back them up), click Open themes folder. Files you place there are picked up the next time you open Settings.

Remove a community theme with the trash icon next to it; its file is deleted from the themes folder.

How themes work (and why they're safe)​

A theme supplies a light and/or a dark set of colors. Any color a theme leaves out falls back to the built-in Phi value, so a partial theme is perfectly fine. Themes can only set colors — fonts, spacing, and layout aren't themeable — and every value is validated as a safe CSS color when the file is installed, so an untrusted theme file can't do anything beyond changing a color.

Officially supported community themes live in the φ themes gallery:

github.com/getpoiesis/themes

It's the home for ready-made palettes — Nord, Dracula, and friends — packaged as installable theme files. Browse it for a palette you like, download the .json, and install it as above.

Contributions are welcome. Made a theme you're proud of? Open a pull request to the gallery and share it — well-made themes are added for everyone. The repo's README has the (small) theme-file format and the contribution guidelines.

Languages​

φ's interface can run in different languages.

Switching language​

Under Settings → Appearance → Language, set Interface language. System default follows your Mac; otherwise pick a language from the list.

The built-in languages are:

  • English (English)
  • Spanish (Español)
  • French (Français)

Community language packs​

Like themes, additional languages are installable JSON files kept in your own locales folder, outside the app.

  • Install a language… — select a language .json file to add it. It appears under Community in the language list.
  • Export English template… — saves a file with every interface string in English. Translate the values and install the result to run φ in your language — or share it so it can ship for everyone.
  • Open folder — reveals where installed languages live.

Remove a community language with the trash icon beside it.

Missing translations fall back to English​

A translation doesn't have to be complete to be useful. Any string a language pack doesn't translate falls back to English, so φ is always fully labeled even with a partial translation in place.