Color Variables

Every theme must define these 19 standard color variables. Values are hex colors without the # prefix.

Standard variables

Variable	Description
background	Primary background color
foreground	Primary text/foreground color
cursor	Cursor color
selection-background	Background of selected text
selection-foreground	Foreground of selected text

ANSI colors

Each ANSI color has a normal and highlight (-hg) variant:

Normal	Highlight	ANSI code
black	black-hg	0 / 8
red	red-hg	1 / 9
green	green-hg	2 / 10
yellow	yellow-hg	3 / 11
blue	blue-hg	4 / 12
magenta	magenta-hg	5 / 13
cyan	cyan-hg	6 / 14
white	white-hg	7 / 15

Note

The -hg suffix stands for “highlight” — these are the bright/bold variants of each ANSI color.

Format rules

• Colors are hex values without #: ff5555, not #ff5555
• Add the appropriate prefix in your patterns:
  • #<[red]> → #ff5555 (CSS, kitty, etc.)
  • 0x<[red]> → 0xff5555 (Alacritty legacy)
  • rgba(<[red]>ff) → rgba(ff5555ff) (Hyprland)
• All 19 variables are required in every theme

Example

[colors]
background = '1e1f28'
foreground = 'f8f8f2'
cursor = 'bbbbbb'
selection-background = '44475a'
selection-foreground = '1e1f28'
black = '000000'
black-hg = '545454'
red = 'ff5555'
red-hg = 'ff5454'
green = '50fa7b'
green-hg = '50fa7b'
yellow = 'f0fa8b'
yellow-hg = 'f0fa8b'
blue = 'bd92f8'
blue-hg = 'bd92f8'
magenta = 'ff78c5'
magenta-hg = 'ff78c5'
cyan = '8ae9fc'
cyan-hg = '8ae9fc'
white = 'bbbbbb'
white-hg = 'ffffff'

Previewing colors

To see a theme’s colors rendered in your terminal:

gtheme theme colors <theme>

This displays each color with its hex value, making it easy to verify your theme looks correct.