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Themes change the complete visual appearance of Obsidian — colors, fonts, spacing, and more. Hundreds of community-made themes are available directly inside the app, supporting both light and dark variants.

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Browse and install a theme

1

Open the theme browser

Go to Settings → Appearance → Themes and select Manage.
2

Choose a theme

Browse the list and select a theme to preview it. Themes respect your current color scheme (light or dark) and many ship with dedicated variants for both.
3

Install and apply the theme

Select Install and use. Obsidian installs the theme and immediately applies it.

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Switch or remove a theme

  • Switch themes: Go to Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage, select a different theme, and choose Install and use.
  • Revert to the default theme: In the theme browser, select the currently active theme and choose Stop using this theme.
  • Uninstall a theme: In the theme browser, select the theme and choose Uninstall.

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Update themes

Themes do not update automatically.
  1. Go to Settings → Appearance → Current community themes.
  2. Select Check for updates.
  3. If updates are available, select Update all.

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Light and dark variants

Most community themes provide styling for both light and dark color schemes. The theme activates the correct variant based on your current color scheme setting in Settings → Appearance → Base color scheme. To switch between light and dark mode independently of the theme, change the Base color scheme option.

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Customize a theme with Style Settings

Many community themes expose customization options through the Style Settings community plugin. After installing both the theme and the Style Settings plugin:
  1. Go to Settings → Style Settings (added by the plugin).
  2. Adjust the options exposed by your theme — for example, font choices, border radius, or heading colors.
Not all themes support Style Settings. Check the theme’s documentation or README to see what customization options it provides.

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Override theme styles with a CSS snippet

If you want to tweak just one or two aspects of a theme without modifying it directly, add a CSS snippet. Snippets load after themes, so their rules take precedence. For example, to change the heading color applied by the active theme: 
/* my-tweaks.css */
body {
  --h1-color: #e06c75;
}
Place this file in <vault>/.obsidian/snippets/ and enable it under Settings → Appearance → CSS snippets.

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Build your own theme

Ready to create a theme from scratch? Follow the Build a theme guide in the Obsidian developer documentation.

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