Automatic dark/light theme switching according to OS

[xmha97]

Hello,
Please add below feature:

• Automatic dark/light theme switching according to OS

In VSCode I can enable this feature using:

window.autoDetectColorScheme

Idea for Windows Terminal:

[j4james]

I think this is a duplicate of #1230.

[xmha97]

I think this is a duplicate of #1230.

No, My issue isn't about a bug. It is about a new feature.

[beviu]

If you set "theme" in the config file to "system", it's supposed to work, but right now I think it doesn't work because of that bug.

[DHowett]

So, this needs #1230 to work properly but it isn’t 1230 alone. There’s also a request that the colorScheme be theme switchable :)

[j4james]

Ah, OK. I get it now. That's a neat idea. But do you not then need some way to specify your preferred light color scheme (or vice versa)? Or does it auto detect it based on the name?

[DHowett]

Yeah, that’s a good question :) Probably warrants at least a mini-spec. There’s also a request for focused/unfocused configuration, so I am a bit concerned about adding another dimension to the config matrix.

[cscorley]

The VS Code implementation in the example has up to four "colorScheme" specifications:

It is a bit verbose, but is much more flexible than requiring a scheme to define both a dark and a light (or high contrast!) variant. For example, I like Dracula at night but it does not define a light variant, so I use Quiet Light during the day.

[mateuszdrab]

Is there a reason why the terminal's title bar does not inherit the Windows accent color where all the other windows do?

Guess this is due to the fact that it's some custom code handling the title bar rendering due to tabs.

[TBBle]

Title Bar colouring is also what I think @DHowett was referring to earlier, probably #4862, which links through to microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml#1332.

To throw another axis into the mix, I'd like to be able to use a different colour scheme when running as admin. I have PowerShell (Core) configured to use Solarised Light when elevated instead of Solarised Dark as I normally use.

Although after learning about it from this ticket, I set up VSCode to use Solarized Light/Dark per the OS theme, so maybe I should find a different way of reminding myself when I'm elevated.

Edit: To be clear, I'm talking about if the whole WT process is running elevated, not trying to mix this in with the 'elevated tabs' request. Currently PowerShell Core under conhost ends up ignoring my admin-based colour switch when it draws a cell with text input or Control-L, so if the switch was handled at the WT level and applied the WT colourschemes, it'd work better than it does now, I think.

[ChristAlbert]

Isn't this a duplicate of #4066?

[zadjii-msft]

@ChristAlbert good find! It totally is. Thanks for digging that out of our backlog!

/dup #4066

[ghost]

Hi! We've identified this issue as a duplicate of another one that already exists on this Issue Tracker. This specific instance is being closed in favor of tracking the concern over on the referenced thread. Thanks for your report!

[electronic-dk]

@zadjii-msft I thought #4066 spoke about the color profile specifically, while this ticket is about the terminal theme itself (dynamic change without having to restart the terminal). Are these 2 aspects planned to be implemented in scope of one ticket?

[zadjii-msft]

From the way I understand it:

• New terminal does not handle theme change event. #1230 covers: "When I set the theme to system, the RequestedTheme of the Terminal should update when I change my system theme"
• Theme-controlled color scheme switch #4066 is "I want to change color scheme based off the current RequestedTheme of the Terminal application"

[b-hayes]

Waiting for this feature. Currently, every time I change to dark/light mode I have to open my terminal config file and comment/uncomment my light colour scheme manually. And yes you would need to set a preferred light scheme, every other application I use does it a similar way.
The smart ones just remember what colour scheme was active last time you were in light/dark mode.

[TBBle]

@b-hayes Yup, that's being tracked in #4066.

[Msouza91]

Waiting for this feature. Currently, every time I change to dark/light mode I have to open my terminal config file and comment/uncomment my light colour scheme manually. And yes you would need to set a preferred light scheme, every other application I use does it a similar way. The smart ones just remember what colour scheme was active last time you were in light/dark mode.

I've setup a cron job using sed and some tricks to change between a light and dark theme, the job runs every 29 minutes and checks if the sun is up using hdate.
https://pastebin.com/LPc2Fe0h

It is a bit hacky, but works, I've setup the terminal to start up with user login.

[zadjii-msft]

Or, y'know, this feature was added to the Terminal a couple releases back: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-appearance#color-scheme

"colorScheme":
{
    "light": "One Half Light",
    "dark": "One Half Dark",
},

[Msouza91]

Or, y'know, this feature was added to the Terminal a couple releases back: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/terminal/customize-settings/profile-appearance#color-scheme

"colorScheme":
{
    "light": "One Half Light",
    "dark": "One Half Dark",
},

I didn't look too much into it, I couldn't be arsed to read the whole thread so I made a quick hack for it, thanks for showing me this. Now it syncs perfectly with Night Light settings and Auto Dark Mode.

[Kellen-Stuart]

I don't know why but mine just stays on dark no matter what.

"profiles": 
    {
        "defaults": 
        {
            "colorScheme": {
                "dark": "Ayu Dark",
                "light": "Ayu Light"
            },
            "font": 
            {
                "size": 16.0
            }
        },
        "list": 
        ...

[adityamwagh]

@Kellen-Stuart We need to see your complete config file to point out the issue.

[zadjii-msft]

I'm guessing it's your theme setting. That needs to be set to default (or, "use windows theme") to allow the app to switch between themes, so that the scheme can match the app's theme.