Sublime 3 Install New Theme or Use White Color Scheme

John D K -

As a Linux user I like to use Sublime Text 3 as a primary text editor. It's a feature rich, offers good pluggins and is a good alternative of Notepad++ for Linux(you still can use Notepad++ if you like - more info here - Using Notepad++ on Ubuntu). For me Sublime text is best native text editor for Ubuntu/Linux Mint/Debian in 2018.

Sublime text editor comes in dark color scheme which is perfectly fine. I've been use it like this for years. Recently I decided to switch from dark to bright color scheme - in this article I'll post all option:

Sublime Text 3 Install new bright theme

If you want to install new theme for Sublime you can use the package manager or add it manually. I always recommend to be used package managers and tools for installation. Personally I don't like the idea of doing something manually. In this post I'll cover both but I prefer the second one - automated. First be sure that you have it or install it by:

Install package control

In order to install package control you can visit this page and follow the instructions: Sublime Install package control

Manual installation

  • Preferences
  • Browse Packages…
  • Browse up a folder and then into the Installed Packages/ folder
  • Download Package Control.sublime-package
  • copy the file into the Installed Packages/ directory
  • Restart Sublime Text

or automated:

  • View
  • Show Console
  • Paste this code(for Sublime 3)
import urllib.request,os,hashlib; h = '6f4c264a24d933ce70df5dedcf1dcaee' + 'ebe013ee18cced0ef93d5f746d80ef60'; pf = 'Package Control.sublime-package'; ipp = sublime.installed_packages_path(); urllib.request.install_opener( urllib.request.build_opener( urllib.request.ProxyHandler()) ); by = urllib.request.urlopen( 'http://packagecontrol.io/' + pf.replace(' ', '%20')).read(); dh = hashlib.sha256(by).hexdigest(); print('Error validating download (got %s instead of %s), please try manual install' % (dh, h)) if dh != h else open(os.path.join( ipp, pf), 'wb' ).write(by)

Install new theme in Sublime Text editor

Installing new theme in Sublime is simple:

  • Open Sublime Text 3
  • Main Menu
  • Tools
  • Command Palette - or CMD/CTRL + SHIFT + P
  • choose - Package Control: Install Package
  • Find a theme that you like - for example Boxy Theme
  • install Boxy Theme
  • restart Sublime

Changing color scheme

If you want to change the color scheme in Sublime then you can follow next steps:

  • Main Menu
  • Preferences
  • Select Color Scheme
  • Choose a Color Scheme from installed ones
  • I use Dark Material

Adding legacy theme/color scheme

Sometimes you may want to a color scheme or theme which was part from Sublime 2 but not in 3. In this case you can use legacy color scheme:

  • Visit this page for latest reference - Color Scheme - Legacy
  • Package Control(if you need install it - you have instruction above)
  • Command Palette
  • Run the Package Control: Install Package
  • Type "Color Scheme - Legacy" and press Enter

Note: The legacy color schemes could be hidden in your version. So you will need to enable them by adding "show_legacy_color_schemes": true to your preferences.

List of interesting Sublime themes for 2018/2019

Boxy Theme - It comes with light and dark schema, allows you customize the interface. Almost everything in the text editor can be customized.

Be careful for this theme:

Warning!

Boxy Theme will be deprecated in favor of the DA UI, once it reaches to stable version 1.0.0.

DA UI engine allows you to do a lot more than Boxy settings abuse. However some important features such as bar or alternative icons are missing currently. Some of them will be added later, others – not. Feel free to file your issues and suggestions here.

Dark Material - My personal favorite. This theme is a fork of the original Material Theme by Equinusocio. Very popular theme with nice color options.

Agila Theme - Really nice and feature rich theme. It allows you to play with the interface and do it in your flavor. It has really good documentation too. For example you can change the file tree in many different ways.