Tinty - A Tinted Theming CLI tool written in Rust 🦀

Change the theme of your terminal, text editor and anything else with one command. Immediately switch between over 250 themes!

Tinty is a Base16 and Base24 theming manager for all Tinted Theming projects including any third-party template repository that follows the Base16 builder specification.

To learn more about Tinted Theming and the base16 specification, have a look at our home repository and preview the themes supported by Tinty have a look at our Base16 Gallery.

Table of contents

• How it works
• Installation
• Basic usage
• Usage
• Configuration
• Migration from Flavours
• Debugging Tinty issues
• Contributing
• License

How it Works

At its core, Tinty is designed to simplify the theming process across different tools and environments by leveraging the power of Base16 and Base24 template themes. Here's a closer look at how Tinty operates:

Theme Application Process

When you setup Tinty and apply a theme, Tinty performs several steps to ensure that your selected theme is seamlessly integrated across your specified applications:

1. Configuration Loading: Tinty starts by reading your config.toml file to understand your settings and the specific theming components ([[items]]) you've defined. This configuration dictates everything from which shell to use for executing hooks to what themes and templates are applied.

2. Theme Repository Management: For each item in your configuration, Tinty checks if the necessary theme template repository is already cloned to your local machine. If not, it clones the repository to ~/.local/share/tinted-theming/tinty, ensuring that the latest themes are always at your fingertips.

3. Theme Copying: Once the repositories are set up, Tinty copies the relevant theme files from each template repository based on the scheme you've chosen to apply. This step gathers all necessary template theme files in one place.

4. Executed Hooks: With all theme files ready, Tinty then executes the optional shell hooks specified in your config.toml. These hooks might apply the theme directly (e.g., by sourcing a shell script) or perform additional actions like copying theme files to specific locations. This is where the actual theme application occurs, affecting your terminal, text editor, and any other tools you've configured.

Beyond Basic Theming

Tinty's functionality extends beyond applying themes:

• Scheme Listing and Information: Tinty can list all available schemes and provide detailed information about them. This feature helps you explore and choose from over 250 themes supported by Tinty, including those from third-party repositories following the Base16 builder specification.

• Dynamic Updates: The tinty update executes a git pull command on your local copy of theme template repositories. This ensures that you have access to the latest themes and updates from the community.

• Initialization and Persistence: Using tinty init, the tool can reapply the last used theme or a default scheme at startup, making your theming preferences persistent across sessions.

Designed for Flexibility

Tinty is built with flexibility in mind, accommodating a wide range of theming needs and preferences. Whether you're looking to quickly switch themes across multiple tools, explore new color schemes, or ensure a consistent look and feel in your development environment, Tinty provides the necessary mechanisms to make it happen.

By understanding the sequence of actions Tinty performs and the options available to you, you can tailor the theming process to suit your workflow, making your experience more enjoyable and productive.

Installation

Cargo

cargo install tinty

Homebrew

brew tap tinted-theming/tinted
brew install tinty

Arch linux

paru -S tinty-git

Binaries

Download the relevant binary from the repository releases page.

Manual

git clone https://github.com/tinted-theming/tinty path/to/tinty
cd path/to/tinty
make install
make build
cp target/release/tinty /path/to/bin/dir

Basic usage

For the most basic usage without configuration, install Tinty and run the following to apply base16-mocha:

tinty sync # Required initially for setup and when your `tinty/config.toml` is updated
tinty apply base16-mocha

To get a list of schemes and more information about the colors:

tinty list
tinty info base16-oceanicnext

Without any config.toml file, tinty will apply your shell theme using tinted-shell using sh shell.

Usage

For advanced usage and setup, have a look at the USAGE.md document.

CLI

The following is a table of the available subcommands for the CLI tool (Tinty), including the descriptions and any notable arguments.

Some subcommands support additional flags and options to modify their behavior:

Configuration

The config.toml file allows you to customize and configure the behavior of the application, enabling personalized themes and functionalities. This file specifies shell settings, the default theme scheme, and configurations for various items such as terminal, editor themes, or any other supported application.

Global config.toml table Schema

Below, you'll find the global configuration options for config.toml. These settings apply to the overall operation of Tinty and include essential configurations such as the default shell command and the default theme scheme. Setting these options tailors the Tinty experience to your preferences and environment.

hooks

Hooks have the following template variables:

• %f - Path to the relevant [[items]] theme file, eg: /home/user/.local/share/tinted-theming/tinty/tinted-alacritty-colors-file.toml.

  This can be useful when copying an applied theme to a path on your system:

  hook = "cp -f %f ~/.config/alacritty/colors.yml"
  

• %n - Name of the current scheme applied, eg: base16-ayu-dark.

  This can be useful when triggering an external service:

  hook = "tinty info %n"
  

• %o - Name of the command operation that is running the hook, eg: apply or init.

  This can be useful for saving system resources and only running certain hooks when they need to be run:

  hook = "[ \"%o\" = \"apply\" ] && cp -f %f ~/.config/alacritty/colors.yml"
  

Items table config.toml Schema

The [[items]] section within config.toml allows for detailed customization of individual themeable components. Each item represents a specific element you can theme, such as a text editor or terminal. The table below outlines the structure for these items, including how to specify templates, directories for theme files, and hooks for applying themes. Configuring items effectively enables you to manage multiple themes across different applications seamlessly.

Note on supported-systems

The supported-systems key within an [[items]] table allows for specifying compatibility with different theming systems. The available options are "base16" and "base24", indicating support for Base16 and Base24 theming systems, respectively. If the template repository does not support a system, it should not be included in this property.

The [[items]] configuration allows defining multiple themeable components, each with its own set of configurations as described above. Here's how you might define multiple items in your config.toml:

Full Configuration Example

Here's a complete config.toml example demonstrating how to configure multiple items along with global settings:

# Global settings
shell = "zsh -c '{}'"
default-scheme = "base16-mocha"

# Item configurations
[[items]]
name = "tinted-shell"
path = "https://github.com/tinted-theming/tinted-shell"
themes-dir = "scripts"
hook = "source %f"
supported-systems = ["base16", "base24"]

[[items]]
name = "base16-vim"
path = "https://github.com/tinted-theming/base16-vim"
themes-dir = "colors"
supported-systems = ["base16"]
# Look at USAGE.md for more information on sourcing the generated file in vim

[[items]]
name = "tmux"
path = "~/path/path/to/base16-tmux"
themes-dir = "colors"
hook = "tmux run 2> /dev/null && tmux source-file %f"
supported-systems = ["base16", "base24"]

Select and apply a scheme using fzf

Note: Requires fzf

tinty apply $(tinty list | fzf)

Migration from Flavours

Flavours is a great base16 manager written in Rust and it's where Tinty has gotten a lot of its inspiration. Flavours isn't actively maintained anymore and that's the reason I continued to build and develop Tinty.

Tinty doesn't include base16 builder (Flavours does) and therefore Tinty copies theme files from template directories instead of generating them. Since a builder is not included in Tinty, generating a scheme based on image colors is not functionality included.

If you're looking for a base16 or base24 builder, have a look at builder-go.

CLI mapping

• flavours apply mocha -> tinty apply base16-mocha
• flavours info mocha -> tinty info base16-mocha
• flavours current -> tinty current
• flavours update -> tinty sync

config.toml mapping

Flavours

# ~/.config/flavours/config.toml
[[item]]
template = "alacritty"
file = "~/.config/alacritty/colors.toml"

[[items]]
file = "~/.config/waybar/colors.css"
template = "waybar"
rewrite = true

[[items]]
file = "~/.config/sway/config"
template = "sway"
subtemplate = "colors"
hook = "swaymsg reload"
light = false

Tinty

# ~/.config/tinted-theming/tinty/config.toml
[[items]]
path = "https://github.com/tinted-theming/tinted-alacritty"
name = "tinted-alacritty"
themes-dir = "colors"
hook = "cp -f %f ~/.config/alacritty/colors.toml"

[[items]]
path = "https://github.com/tinted-theming/base16-waybar"
name = "base16-waybar"
themes-dir = "colors"
hook = "cp -f %f ~/.config/waybar/colors.css"

[[items]]
path = "https://github.com/rkubosz/base16-sway"
name = "base16-sway"
themes-dir = "themes"
hook = "cp -f %f ~/.config/sway/config.d/theme && swaymsg reload"

• path: A path to the repository is provided in the Tinty config.toml. In Flavours this path was determined using the template property
• themes-dir: This is the directory the themes are in within the repository provided in path
• name: A unique name used to set theme filename
• hook: This property exists in Flavours too, but Tinty offloads a bit of work from the Rust codebase to this hook. %f is a template variable which translates to the base16-alacritty relevant theme file. So the hook does a copy of the selected theme and replaces ~/.config/alacritty/colors.toml.

Debugging Tinty issues

tinty config with the relevant flags, --config-path and --data-dir-path, can be useful when attempting to debug an issue with Tinty. These commands can help to make sure that the expected config file is applied and the expected data directory are being used by Tinty.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Have a look at CONTRIBUTING.md for more information.

License

Like most other Tinted Theming projects, Tinty falls under the MIT license. Have a look at the LICENSE document for more information.

Third-Party Licenses

This project includes third-party code licensed under the MPL-2.0, BSD-2-Clause and BSD-3-Clause License. See the [LICENSES-THIRD-PARTY] file for details.