Sublime Forum

Can I create and install a custom theme in the unregistered version of Sublime Merge?

#1

I’ve been enjoying Sublime Merge so far, but I’m hesitating to purchase because I’m not sure if I will be able to customize the theme specifically to my liking. I’ve been trying to add a hand-rolled custom theme, but I haven’t been able to. Is this possible with the unregistered version, or do I have to buy it to apply any theme besides the default light theme?

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#2

I’m not sure of any specific details, but I would guess that since being able to use the dark theme requires you to purchase a license as an incentive that all theme related items are locked to the default when you don’t have a license; otherwise you could make your own dark theme and not have to purchase a license to do it.

That said the Sales FAQ includes a section on refunds that says you can claim a refund within 30 days of purchase, so you could conceivably purchase a license to see and get it refunded if you can’t make the theme changes you want.

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#3

Ah, I didn’t realize there was a return policy. I don’t think that exists on a lot of software these days. That’s reassuring.

I’ll wait for a bit to see if anyone has a specific response to my question, but if not, I think buying and evaluating the theme capabilities will be a good option knowing that I can return if I’m not satisfied. Thanks!

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#4

I have a registered version of SM, and I’d be interested to know if currently is possible to create custom themes. From what I can remember, initially the only themes to choose from were the builtin light and dark themes, so I wonder if now custom themes are possible.

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#5

I believe it is possible because I succeded to change the background color of the selected text in Sublime Text. And any other color can be changed in the same way.
But, to get there, I had to pass all the circles of hell :frowning:
In short, the default color theme is a file “Monokai.sublime-color-scheme” inside “Packages/Color Scheme - Default.sublime-package” that is a zip-archive in fact. And you have to modify this sublime-color-scheme file manually (as text) to get the colors you want, while the colors are defined in an anusual way inside of that file.

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#6

It is certainly possible to build themes for Sublime Merge (and deathaxe has worked on one). There are even docs on this. However, it is not possible to use a different theme in the unregistered version.

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#7

It’s possible, but requires way more work than I ever expected. The dark UI theme is pretty bad in my opinion, but I honestly didn’t know how much work would go into making a new theme and there really aren’t any posted by others that I know of.

Maybe there could be a forum made for custom 3rd party Merge themes here so we can have a centralized location for them?

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#8

As far as I know, @deathaxe seems to be the only person that has worked on a theme for merge so far, but it looks like he never released it or at least I can’t find it on his github profile.

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