textual-themes

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Retro color themes for Textual TUI applications.

41 carefully crafted themes inspired by classic computers, operating systems, vintage diver watches, comic-book color schemes, 80s pastel, Spielberg-era cinema, motorsport liveries, reggae roots and mafia-noir cinema.

⚠ Trademark Disclaimer

This is an independent, fan-made, non-commercial project. Theme names are descriptive of the visual style only — no third-party trademarks are used as theme names. Any remaining brand reference in descriptive text (e.g. "PETSCII style", "GEM Desktop", "Cinnamon-style") is purely descriptive and not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or licensed by the respective trademark owners.

Gallery

Click any thumbnail to open the full-size SVG. Screenshots are taken from the bundled demo app (python -m textual_themes).

Ascot	Beastie	BeBox	Bluesy	Boing
Brick	Brotkasten	Bunty	Christophorus	Classic Navy
Classic Terminal	Clipper	Commandr	Corleone	Crimson
Cupertino	Fifty-Eight	Flughund	Geeko	Gemstone
Golden Brown	Goldfinder	Goldrunner	Hercules	Hulkula
Joker	Lenseflare	Luna	Marley	Metropolis
Miami	Minty	Motif	Next	Plan 9
Platoon	Racing	Razzy	Spiderized	Synthwave
Warp

Themes

Dark Themes

Light Themes

Installation

Add the themes to your own Textual project:

pip install "textual-themes[textual] @ git+https://github.com/michaelblaess/textual-themes.git"

The textual extra is what pulls in Textual itself, and nothing else comes with it - the themes are plain data.

Leave the extra off and you get that data on its own:

pip install git+https://github.com/michaelblaess/textual-themes.git

textual_themes.palettes then gives you all 41 palettes with no dependency beyond the standard library. That is the way in for anything that wants the colours without a TUI framework - a Qt application compiled with Nuitka, a static site generator, a script. The theme objects in textual_themes.themes still need Textual and say so if it is missing.

The bundled storybook additionally needs textual-widgets, which lives in the demo extra, so consumers are never forced into that dependency:

pip install "textual-themes[demo] @ git+https://github.com/michaelblaess/textual-themes.git"

Storybook

Browse all 41 themes interactively in the bundled storybook. Install it with a single command — it sets up an isolated environment and adds a textual-themes-demo launcher to your PATH:

Linux / macOS

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/michaelblaess/textual-themes/main/install.sh | bash

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/michaelblaess/textual-themes/main/install.ps1 | iex

Then launch it:

textual-themes-demo

Requires Python 3.12+ and git. To update later, just run the installer again; to remove it, delete ~/.textual-themes (Linux/macOS) or %LOCALAPPDATA%\textual-themes (Windows) and the textual-themes-demo launcher.

Quick Start

from textual.app import App, ComposeResult
from textual.widgets import Header, Footer, Static

from textual_themes import register_all

class MyApp(App):
    BINDINGS = [("t", "next_theme", "Theme")]

    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        register_all(self)
        self.theme = "brotkasten"

    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        yield Header()
        yield Static("Hello from the past!")
        yield Footer()

    def action_next_theme(self):
        from textual_themes import RETRO_THEME_NAMES
        names = RETRO_THEME_NAMES
        idx = names.index(self.theme) if self.theme in names else -1
        self.theme = names[(idx + 1) % len(names)]

MyApp().run()

Usage

Register all themes at once

from textual_themes import register_all

class MyApp(App):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        register_all(self)       # registers all 41 themes
        self.theme = "boing"     # pick one

Register individual themes

from textual_themes import BROTKASTEN_THEME, CLASSIC_TERMINAL_THEME

class MyApp(App):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.register_theme(BROTKASTEN_THEME)
        self.register_theme(CLASSIC_TERMINAL_THEME)
        self.theme = "classic-terminal"

Available constants

from textual_themes import (
    # Individual Theme objects
    BROTKASTEN_THEME,
    BOING_THEME,
    GEMSTONE_THEME,
    CLASSIC_TERMINAL_THEME,
    NEXT_THEME,
    BEBOX_THEME,
    BUNTY_THEME,
    CUPERTINO_THEME,
    LUNA_THEME,
    COMMANDR_THEME,
    PLAN9_THEME,
    MOTIF_THEME,
    WARP_THEME,
    GEEKO_THEME,
    MINTY_THEME,
    CRIMSON_THEME,
    RAZZY_THEME,
    BEASTIE_THEME,
    FIFTY_EIGHT_THEME,
    BLUESY_THEME,
    GOLDFINDER_THEME,
    HULKULA_THEME,
    FLUGHUND_THEME,
    CLASSIC_NAVY_THEME,
    BRICK_THEME,
    CLIPPER_THEME,
    SYNTHWAVE_THEME,
    MIAMI_THEME,
    RACING_THEME,
    METROPOLIS_THEME,
    SPIDERIZED_THEME,

    # Collections
    RETRO_THEMES,          # list[Theme] — all 41 themes
    RETRO_THEME_NAMES,     # list[str]   — ["brotkasten", "boing", ...]
    THEME_DISPLAY_NAMES,   # dict[str, str]

    # Helper
    register_all,          # register_all(app) — registers all themes
)

Theme names

Use these slugs with app.theme = "...":

Requirements

• Python >= 3.12
• Textual >= 0.85

Editing themes

To tweak an existing theme or design a new one interactively, try textual-theme-editor by Tom J Gooding — a standalone visual theme editor for Textual. Install it separately (pip install textual-theme-editor); it is GPLv3-licensed and not a dependency of this package.

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.