Themes | Zed Code Editor Documentation
Description: Learn how to use and customize Zed, the fast, collaborative code editor. Official docs on features, configuration, AI tools, and workflows.

# Themes

Zed comes with a number of built-in themes, with more themes available as extensions.

## Selecting a Theme

See what themes are installed and preview them via the Theme Selector, which you can open from the command palette with `theme selector: toggle` (bound to `cmd-k cmd-t|ctrl-k ctrl-t`).

Navigating through the theme list by moving up and down will change the theme in real time and hitting enter will save it to your settings file.

## Installing more Themes

More themes are available from the Extensions page, which you can access via the command palette with `zed: extensions` or the Zed website.

Many popular themes have been ported to Zed, and if you're struggling to choose one, visit zed-themes.com, a third-party gallery with visible previews for many of them.

## Configuring a Theme

Your selected theme is stored in your settings file. You can open your settings file from the command palette with `zed: open settings file` (bound to `cmd-alt-,|ctrl-alt-,`).

By default, Zed maintains two themes: one for light mode and one for dark mode. You can set the mode to `"dark"` or `"light"` to ignore the current system mode.

    {
      "theme": {
        "mode": "system",
        "light": "One Light",
        "dark": "One Dark"
      }
    }

## Theme Overrides

To override specific attributes of a theme, use the `theme_overrides` setting. This setting can be used to configure theme-specific overrides.

For example, add the following to your `settings.json` if you wish to override the background color of the editor and display comments and doc comments as italics:

    {
      "theme_overrides": {
        "One Dark": {
          "editor.background": "#333",
          "syntax": {
            "comment": {
              "font_style": "italic"
            },
            "comment.doc": {
              "font_style": "italic"
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }

To see a comprehensive list of list of captures (like `comment` and `comment.doc`) see Language Extensions: Syntax highlighting.

To see a list of available theme attributes look at the JSON file for your theme. For example, assets/themes/one/one.json for the default One Dark and One Light themes.

## Local Themes

Store new themes locally by placing them in the `~/.config/zed/themes` directory (macOS and Linux) or `%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Zed\themes\` (Windows).

For example, to create a new theme called `my-cool-theme`, create a file called `my-cool-theme.json` in that directory. It will be available in the theme selector the next time Zed loads.

## Theme Development

See: Developing Zed Themes