Themes¶

Six themes are built in: tokyonight (the default), catppuccin, monokai, gruvbox, nord and dracula.

The general tab of S cycles them with Space, and Shift+T goes back the other way. Whatever you land on is remembered in ~/.config/muxget/theme and used next launch. To try one without keeping it:

muxget --theme nord
MUXGET_THEME=gruvbox muxget

A name muxget does not recognise falls back to the default rather than refusing to start, and matching ignores case.

The eight colours¶

A theme is eight colours. muxget uses them by role, not by name, so a theme with sensible roles looks right everywhere without listing a colour per widget.

key	paints
`accent`	the selected row, running downloads, headings, progress bars, the queue you are in
`ok`	done rows, seeding torrents, the throughput sparkline, the done count
`err`	failed rows, paused rows, the failed count, error messages
`muted`	labels, borders, hints, the footer, anything secondary
`selected`	the background behind the selected row
`bg`	the window background
`panel`	the sidebar, and the darker stripe in zebra-striped rows
`fg`	ordinary text

Two of these carry more weight than the rest. accent is what your eye follows, so it wants to be the brightest thing on screen. err doubles as the paused colour, because a paused row is something you stopped and probably mean to start again, and both want noticing.

panel should sit close to bg, a shade darker or lighter. It is the alternating row background as well as the sidebar, so a large gap between the two turns the table into a barcode.

Writing your own¶

Drop a file in ~/.config/muxget/themes/. The file name is the theme name, so ~/.config/muxget/themes/solarized.toml gives you a theme called solarized.

# ~/.config/muxget/themes/solarized.toml
accent   = "#268bd2"   # selection, running, headings
ok       = "#859900"   # done, throughput
err      = "#dc322f"   # failed, paused
muted    = "#586e75"   # labels, borders, hints
selected = "#073642"   # selected row background
bg       = "#002b36"   # window background
panel    = "#00212b"   # panel and stripe background
fg       = "#93a1a1"   # text

Every key is optional. One you leave out keeps tokyonight's colour, so a file with three lines in it is a perfectly good theme.

Colours are #rrggbb and nothing else: no names, no short #abc form, no rgb(). Quotes are optional. A value muxget cannot read is skipped and that key keeps its default, and so is a key it does not know, so a typo costs you one colour rather than the launch.

Naming your file after a built-in replaces it. themes/nord.toml is how you keep the name and change the greens.

The list of themes is read once at startup, so a file you have just written or edited shows up on the next launch.

Terminal caveats¶

Colours are sent as 24-bit RGB. A terminal without truecolour support will approximate them, which usually means your carefully chosen panel and bg collapse into the same shade and the stripes disappear. COLORTERM=truecolor in the environment is the usual fix, if the terminal actually supports it.

muxget paints its own background, so a transparent or image-backed terminal is painted over inside the app.

Next: what is kept on disk.