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Obsidian gives you extensive control over its visual appearance. You can adjust everything from the color scheme and fonts to the window frame style and app icon. Open Settings → Appearance to access these options.

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Color scheme

Obsidian ships with light and dark color schemes. The default setting adapts to your operating system’s mode automatically. To change the color scheme:
  1. Open Settings → Appearance.
  2. Under Base color scheme, choose one of the following:
OptionDescription
Adapt to systemFollows your OS light/dark mode setting.
LightAlways uses the light color scheme.
DarkAlways uses the dark color scheme.

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Accent color

Select a custom accent color to personalize buttons, links, and highlights across the app. Use the color picker or the reset icon next to the Accent color setting.

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Themes

Community themes change the complete visual style of Obsidian. Hundreds of themes are available directly inside the app.
1

Open the theme browser

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

Choose a theme

Browse the list. Select a theme to preview it, then select Install and use to apply it.
3

Revert to the default theme

In the same browser, select Stop using this theme to return to Obsidian’s built-in look.

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Update themes

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

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Uninstall a theme

  1. Go to Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage.
  2. Select the theme, then select Uninstall.

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Font settings

You can set three independent fonts in Settings → Appearance → Font:
SettingApplies to
Interface fontAll of Obsidian’s UI chrome (menus, sidebars, buttons).
Text fontThe editing and reading views for your notes.
Monospace fontCode blocks, inline code, and frontmatter.
Enter a font name directly in each field, or leave it blank to use the system default.

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Font size

Use the Font size slider to set the size in pixels for editing and reading views. You can also adjust font size on the fly:
  • Windows/Linux: Ctrl+Scroll
  • macOS: Cmd+Scroll or trackpad pinch-zoom

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Zoom level

The Zoom level slider under Settings → Appearance → Advanced controls the overall scale of the entire app interface, separate from the text font size.

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Window frame style

Under Settings → Appearance → Advanced → Window frame style, choose how the title bar of Obsidian windows looks:
StyleDescription
Obsidian frameUses Obsidian’s custom window frame.
Native frameUses your OS’s default window frame.
Hidden frameHides the title bar completely.
A full restart is required for this change to take effect.

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Translucent window

On macOS, you can make the Obsidian window translucent by enabling Translucent window under Settings → Appearance.
The Obsidian team removed translucency support on Windows in version 1.15.11 due to Electron removing the underlying feature.

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Custom app icon

You can replace the Obsidian app icon with one of your own.
1

Open appearance settings

Go to Settings → Appearance → Advanced → Custom app icon and select Choose.
2

Select an icon file

Pick an icon from your filesystem. Accepted formats: .icns, .ico, .png, .svg.
3

Relaunch Obsidian

Select Relaunch. Your new icon appears in the taskbar and dock after restart.
On Windows, you may need an extra step to update the taskbar icon. Right-click the Obsidian icon in the taskbar → right-click Obsidian → Properties → Change Icon, then locate your icon file and click OK. Restart Explorer or reboot to apply.

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CSS snippets

For targeted style overrides without building a full theme, use CSS snippets. Manage snippets at Settings → Appearance → CSS snippets. See CSS snippets for full details.

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