Dracula Theme – A dark theme for many different apps

I use Dracula for pretty much everything. Code editors, terminals, browsers, Slack, and even CSS skins for Tailwind, Wordpress, and more, if I&#x27;m installing an application, there&#x27;s a pretty good chance there&#x27;s already a theme for it.<p>But there&#x27;s an interesting side effect of having a theme repository with over 200 applications: app discovery! Whether it&#x27;s learning about interesting projects (BetterDiscord, MatterMost, Obsidian) or blasts from the past (I hadn&#x27;t thought about BBEdit in a long time! And does anyone remember Brackets?), it&#x27;s kind of a cool spot to find and remember things.<p>Good work and thank you to everyone who has worked on these themes, I use them every day for a lot of apps :)

I have a hard time seeing why this is such a popular theme.. maybe it&#x27;s just because it is available for so many different editors. On the other hand, would be cool to have an application &#x2F; database that could convert any theme to another editor.<p>Although that would take a lot of work to figure out the compatibilities, if somebody would do that well enough so that other people can configure input output configs for that, I bet that program could become very popular among developers.

Dracula is a fine theme, however, I feel like it&#x27;s more convenient than it is pretty. I admire Dracula, Nord, and Gruvbox and how committed they are to their own aesthetics - my personal favorite, similar to Gruvbox, is Alduin[0] but sadly it&#x27;s for Vim only.<p>I only wish popular themes didn&#x27;t feel like they had to use every primary color for the text. I wish we took the popular themes and made them even more opinionated, fewer colors with greater emphasis. At the end of the day most themes nowadays are just different shades of all rainbow text over your choice of a light or dark background. Dark or light... It reminds me of that theory about how early humans, before having words for different colors, only had light and dark to describe things.<p>Does anyone have any recommendations for opinionated color schemes with limited palettes with emphasis on particular colors instead of just dark&#x2F;light?<p>0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;AlessandroYorba&#x2F;Alduin" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;AlessandroYorba&#x2F;Alduin</a>

Cool idea of making it available across so many different applications, but I wish it was aesthetically pleasing. It just doesn&#x27;t do it for me...

If this is a theme thread then the Modus themes by Protesilaos are the best emacs themes for me by far. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;protesilaos.com&#x2F;emacs&#x2F;modus-themes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;protesilaos.com&#x2F;emacs&#x2F;modus-themes</a>

Don&#x27;t forget the keycaps: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;omnitype.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;gmk-dracula" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;omnitype.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;gmk-dracula</a>

I envy those who can use dark colour schemes. It hurts my eyes for some reason.

Dracula is a great example of a small &quot;startup&quot; built by a solo developer. It&#x27;s microfounder Zeno is making around $8,000 per month with it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;microfounder.com&#x2F;startups&#x2F;dracula" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;microfounder.com&#x2F;startups&#x2F;dracula</a>

Eventually everyone will circle back to Gruvbox, that&#x27;s just how it is supposed to be :)

I used solarized for a long time, but then I got PaperColor [0] recommended by a colleague recently, and after trying it for a bit I liked it so much that I switched to that exclusively.<p>It was originally made for vim, but there are ports to other tools[1].<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;NLKNguyen&#x2F;papercolor-theme" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;NLKNguyen&#x2F;papercolor-theme</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;NLKNguyen&#x2F;papercolor-theme#-related-projects-based-on-papercolor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;NLKNguyen&#x2F;papercolor-theme#-related-proje...</a>

Hey everyone,<p>Dracula creator here!<p>Feel free to ask me anything, I&#x27;ll try to respond every single comment.

Great idea to have a cross-app theme, but Monokai Pro is hard to beat for me. I love that theme and I wish I could use it for other things too.

Wasn&#x27;t the name for this originally &#x27;Darcula&#x27; and not Dracula?

For emacs I use doom-one-light <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hlissner&#x2F;emacs-doom-themes&#x2F;tree&#x2F;screenshots#doom-one-light" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hlissner&#x2F;emacs-doom-themes&#x2F;tree&#x2F;screensho...</a><p>I wish there were light themes which are consistent across apps. The only ones I&#x27;ve usually found consistent are Atom One Light. I usually stick to light themes because it is more comfortable on the eyes, provided your environment is also well lit. I find this easier to do than staying with dark environments and stepping away from the PC to be blinded by light. This and lower brightness helps.<p>Adding to the above, light themes are usually the default provided by most apps (except discord in my experience) which makes it easier for me to get up and running with any app &#x2F; system rather than trying to get a dark mode theme to work for the app (if they provide one). I honestly want to spend my time better than going down that rabbit hole of &quot;the ideal dark system&quot;. On top of that there&#x27;s the question of whether the theme is maintained consistently and whether it is supported or abandoned.

Dracula is a very well-crafted theme, but I can&#x27;t help feeling like it makes my editor feel like a toy. I&#x27;ve gone a lot of different themes, but the only (dark) one that has worked out for me is everforest [1], with the following modifications:<p><pre><code> vim.cmd [[hi Normal guibg=#111111]] vim.cmd [[hi EndOfBuffer guibg=#111111]] vim.cmd [[hi StatusLine guifg=#ccdc90]] vim.cmd [[hi link TSLiteral TSString]] vim.cmd [[hi TSField guifg=#c4b89b]] vim.cmd [[hi TSTag gui=italic]] vim.cmd [[hi TSTagDelimiter guifg=#859289]] vim.cmd [[hi TSInclude guifg=#d699b6]] vim.cmd [[hi link TSInclude Purple]] vim.cmd [[hi link mkdWikiLink TSURI]] vim.cmd [[hi link mkdWikiLinkStart Blue]] vim.cmd [[hi link mkdWikiLinkEnd Blue]] </code></pre> Notable themes I&#x27;ve kinda liked (but had some problems with for various reasons): moonfly and zenburn<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sainnhe&#x2F;everforest" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sainnhe&#x2F;everforest</a>

I think I might be neurodivergent, having a similar look and feel across code editors and terminals always pleases me greatly for some reason. That’s definitely one reason I like Dracula; it’s so easy to get it across everything I use.<p>Been using it for over a year; IMO it’s a pretty readable theme that’s easy on the eyes.

I prefer something more toned down -&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nordtheme.com&#x2F;ports" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nordtheme.com&#x2F;ports</a>

I&#x27;m impressed that Dracula Pro generated over $189,389.50. It&#x27;s cool that they managed to make money from their color scheme.

Are most people working with these themes in fairly low lit environments with a backlight? Because I assumed that current research indicated that in normal light darker text on a light background was actually less tiring for the eyes.

Don’t confuse with Darcula.

I use Dracula color scheme along with the Cascadia Code font [1]. I&#x27;ve been using this set up in both VSCode for Rust and Java in IntelliJ. I find this combination to be extremely readable. Dracula uses many very different colors which make different parts of code obvious. Cascadia has unique shapes for many of the characters which makes distinguishing them a breeze. Would definitely recommend giving this combo a shot!<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;microsoft&#x2F;cascadia-code" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;microsoft&#x2F;cascadia-code</a>

I&#x27;m a fan. It&#x27;s a good name, a decent theme, and there just is something comforting in having things look the same across applications...

The default dark theme of MS VS Code is sublime (pun intended) and is one of the greater design artifacts of MSFT.<p>There are almost zero 3rd party themes, paid or not, that are thoughtfully designed. It takes an odd combination of understanding the language a bit, understanding the utility of colour and contrast, and then also aesthetics - and then a lot of energy devoted to tweaking it just perfectly.

It’s a nice theme. I can’t really see myself buying a theme for Xcode, though. I can easily afford it, but I don’t really need it. If I did need it, then I’d definitely get it. It may seem like a “trivial” thing, but I spend a significant part of my life, staring at code in a text editor. It’s worth taking seriously.<p>I run dark on my Mac, but use Xcode with a modified default light theme (off-white page background, with high-contrast monospace sans-serif text). Same with BBEdit (my general-purpose text editor). I use a translucent dark for Terminal, though. I don’t spend much time in CLI.<p>For whatever reason, it allows me my greatest productivity. I don’t really care why. I’m constantly coding, so it’s important for me to be comfortable. I’ve tried dark page backgrounds, a few times, and never became comfortable with them.<p>I’m not particularly interested in impressing anyone, or being perceived as “cool.” That ship has sailed. I am definitely “uncool.”<p>But I get a lot of stuff done, fairly well, and quite quickly.

Is there a theme like this (i.e. supporting so many or just slightly less apps) but light? For those who work near open windows during sunny days (so dark themes become unreadable) or just prefer uniformity and are this way limited to light themes because some apps they need don&#x27;t support dark?

I wish there was a good theme out there that has support for lots of different apps, and has a light and dark theme. Dark themes are great when you&#x27;re working in the dark, but during the day, when the sun is at its highest, and your brightness is maxed, Dark themes just don&#x27;t work.

I clicked Dracula Pro, this appeared at the top of the page:<p>&gt; Hey! You&#x27;re coming from Turkey where this could be too expensive.<p>&gt; I believe in Purchasing Parity Power, and I want to make this affordable.<p>&gt; If you need it, use the code TRPRO for an extra 64% off the regular price.<p>I love you &lt;3

I like the dracula theme but I unfortunately have to advice people to not purchase the early access on the dracula ui. I bought early access pretty much when it was announced because I thought it looked nice and would fit to a product I was building at the moment.<p>The thing is that the development of the ui seems to have died pretty much and there hasn&#x27;t been any updates for months. It requires you to use npm to use the ui and if you don&#x27;t use React (which I don&#x27;t) you may only use it by using the classes directly.<p>I had higher hopes for the ui and that the development would have been more active since they charge you a pretty large fee for it.

I think a big factor with color themes is actually the monitor settings. I have my monitor tuned for dark mode everywhere. If I put a light theme on, the contrast doesn&#x27;t look right and I go back to dark themes. Maybe it&#x27;s a result of my fine-tuning, but the default &quot;Visual Studio Dark&quot; theme in VS Code is my favorite. It&#x27;s a great minimalist theme. And I&#x27;ve even tried a lot of the minimalist themes suggested in this thread.

I like how they just use random icons for each app on the page

This is cute. I know someone who&#x27;ll love this. I hope people do more of these bundles though, as this particular one isn&#x27;t for me.

I found the auto-retyping-animation product description on the site very misleading. As I scanned the page I read &quot;Dark theme for Vim&quot;, and was immediately confused. Only when I returned to the top of the page did I notice that there was some silly animation which &quot;retyped&quot; Vim for a variety of other editors.<p>Why not just accurately say what it is?

I use (Neo)Vim on a terminal with the option &quot;colorscheme&quot; set on &quot;default&quot;. When I tried Dracula and set up my terminal color scheme with it, it made diffs on Vim unreadable (sometimes background color was the same as the foreground color). I have never seen anywhere any mention of this issue.<p>Did someone also have this problem here?

I love this theme and its community. I use dracula color schemes pretty much only at night though. I wrote some tooling to hook into gammastep for seamless transition between dracula and a lighter theme across my tools depending on time of day. I work a lot in the sun and dracula can be very hard to see in direct sunlight.

Instead of porting one specific theme to all these apps, wouldn&#x27;t it be better to have a &quot;metatheme&quot; which can generate proper themes for all of these apps based on a template? I don&#x27;t see why this wouldn&#x27;t be possible, but I don&#x27;t have any experience with skinning apps.

Nice! But why do they always make code comments in a color that&#x27;s so discret it&#x27;s barely readable?

I like it but low contrast make it unusable for me. For example comment color is almost the same color as the background, hard to read for me.<p>I use default VS Code theme with background changed to pure black and some other colors made brighter.

Random thought, ever think about using something like greasemonkey to add themes to websites? It would probably be difficult, but something like adding a dracula theme to google, lichess, hacker news, etc would be awesome.

Dang. I&#x27;d love this if they swapped the magenta for something like navy blue.

I prefer the reverse: Alucard theme for Terminal <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;lysyi3m&#x2F;macos-terminal-themes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;lysyi3m&#x2F;macos-terminal-themes</a>

I didn’t think it would work but I’ve grown fond of switching between light and dark os theme based on the time of day, and having all apps auto-adjust. If you haven’t yet give it a try.

Somehow all themes follow a kinda similar approach.<p>I always wondered how a different approach would change the way we write code.<p>Like, deemphasizin clutter code like braces, and emphasizing information like comments.

I like this a lot _except_ for the usage of green. IS there a theme like this but without the heavy reliance on green? IDK what it is but green is just off-putting for me.

What other themes are there like this? I know of Nord, but it would be interesting to see what other themes there are that are as comprehensive as Nord and Dracula.

It is novel to me to collect apps in terms of theme.

Not to be confused with Darcula I take it?

I’ve enjoyed Dracula for years but I also enjoy light themes.<p>I’m currently using Ayu Light in Sublime with BB Manual Mono Pro TX.

I tried it, but after some time I figured out that VS Code&#x27;s default theme is much better for my eyes.

Not a big fan of purple myself, I love warm colours. But it looks like a well balanced theme.

Used it for a while then progressed to Gruvbox which I find to be easier on the eyes.

Off-topic: As a person with astigmatism I just don&#x27;t like black themes..

as themes go, fwiw, within emacs &amp; xterm, i am hooked to zenburn. from time to time, i keep trying other themes, and then go back to zenburn eventually.

Used to use it now use monokai pro spectrum

Beautiful theme. Any plans for CMUS?

this is worth it just to see the screenshots of the apps for it&#x27;s own purposes

I like Gotham theme more.

Try also nordtheme

For me, it is &quot;Pale Fire&quot;[1] with semantic highlighting in VS Code.<p>&gt; [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marketplace.visualstudio.com&#x2F;items?itemName=matklad.pale-fire" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marketplace.visualstudio.com&#x2F;items?itemName=matklad....</a>

Nord is vastly superior.

There&#x27;s no way Dracula is not copyrighted. What next, StarWars theme?

I&#x27;m a simple man: I see Dracula mentioned, I upvote.

It seems like a grift to me. SEO the name of a popular theme (Darcula) and sell a Pro version.<p>Edit: my gripe is really with Google and Bing, which will show a lot of results for Dracula in the results for <i>darcula theme</i> when there are plenty of results for Darcula. This happens a lot with other terms as well. ¯\_(ツ)_&#x2F;¯