Ghostty supports a powerful theming system that allows you to customize colors and appearance. You can use built-in themes, create custom themes, or define colors directly in your configuration.
Using Built-in Themes Ghostty ships with many built-in themes. To see all available themes:
Setting a Theme Add the theme configuration to your config file:
Themes are searched in two locations:
Your configuration directory: ~/.config/ghostty/themes/
Ghostty’s resource directory (built-in themes)
Light and Dark Mode Themes You can specify different themes for light and dark mode:
theme = light:Rose Pine Dawn,dark:Rose Pine
Both light and dark must be specified in this format. The theme will automatically switch based on your desktop environment’s appearance setting.
Whitespace around theme names is trimmed, and the order of light/dark doesn’t matter.
Custom Themes Creating a Custom Theme
Create the themes directory
mkdir -p ~/.config/ghostty/themes
Create your theme file
Theme files use the same syntax as Ghostty’s main configuration file: ~/.config/ghostty/themes/my-theme
# Basic colors background = #1a1b26 foreground = #c0caf5 # Cursor colors cursor-color = #c0caf5 cursor-text = #1a1b26 # Selection colors selection-foreground = #c0caf5 selection-background = #33467c # Palette (0-15: ANSI colors) palette = 0 = #15161e palette = 1 = #f7768e palette = 2 = #9ece6a palette = 3 = #e0af68 palette = 4 = #7aa2f7 palette = 5 = #bb9af7 palette = 6 = #7dcfff palette = 7 = #a9b1d6 palette = 8 = #414868 palette = 9 = #f7768e palette = 10 = #9ece6a palette = 11 = #e0af68 palette = 12 = #7aa2f7 palette = 13 = #bb9af7 palette = 14 = #7dcfff palette = 15 = #c0caf5
Using Absolute Paths You can also reference a theme file with an absolute path:
theme = /path/to/my-theme-file
Theme files can set any configuration option. Only use themes from trusted sources.
Color Configuration Basic Colors Colors can be specified as hex codes or named X11 colors:
background = #282C34 foreground = #FFFFFF
The 256 Color Palette The palette configuration sets colors 0-255 for terminal applications:
# Format: palette = N=COLOR palette = 0 = #000000 # Black palette = 1 = #FF0000 # Red palette = 2 = #00FF00 # Green palette = 3 = #FFFF00 # Yellow palette = 4 = #0000FF # Blue palette = 5 = #FF00FF # Magenta palette = 6 = #00FFFF # Cyan palette = 7 = #FFFFFF # White
The index can be decimal, binary (0b), octal (0o), or hexadecimal (0x).
Automatic Palette Generation Since version 1.3.0, Ghostty can automatically generate the extended 256-color palette (indices 16-255) from your base 16 ANSI colors:
# Enable automatic palette generation (default: true) palette-generate = true
This allows theme authors to specify only the base 16 colors while maintaining a cohesive color scheme throughout the palette.
Advanced Color Features Cursor Colors Customize the cursor and its text:
cursor-color = #FF0000 cursor-text = #FFFFFF cursor-opacity = 1.0
You can also match cell colors:
cursor-color = cell-foreground cursor-text = cell-background
Selection Colors selection-foreground = #FFFFFF selection-background = #0000FF
Or match cell colors (available since 1.2.0):
selection-foreground = cell-foreground selection-background = cell-background
Minimum Contrast Ensure text is always readable by setting a minimum contrast ratio:
# Value between 1 and 21 (WCAG 2.0 contrast ratio) minimum-contrast = 1.1 # Avoid invisible text # minimum-contrast = 3 # Good readability # minimum-contrast = 7 # WCAG AAA compliance
Examples
Dark Theme theme = Tokyo Night background-opacity = 0.95
Light Theme theme = Rose Pine Dawn minimum-contrast = 3
Auto-switching theme = light:Github Light,dark:Github Dark
Custom Colors background = #1e1e2e foreground = #cdd6f4 cursor-color = #f5e0dc
Known Issues
macOS : Titlebar tab style is not updated when switching between light and dark themesTheme overrides: Colors specified via background, foreground, palette, etc. will override theme colors