Themes

The REPL and the TUI share one set of colour themes. The default is Tokyo Night.

Built-in themes

Family	Themes
Tokyo Night	tokyo-night, tokyo-night-storm, tokyo-night-day
Catppuccin	catppuccin-mocha, catppuccin-macchiato, catppuccin-frappe, catppuccin-latte
Gruvbox	gruvbox-dark, gruvbox-light
Solarized	solarized-dark, solarized-light
Rosé Pine	rose-pine, rose-pine-moon, rose-pine-dawn
Everforest	everforest-dark, everforest-light
GitHub	github-dark, github-light
Others	dracula, nord, one-dark, kanagawa, monokai, ayu-dark, nightfox, material-ocean
Terminal	ansi: uses your terminal's own 16 colours

Names are forgiving: case, spaces, - and _ don't matter, so Tokyo Night and tokyo_night both work. Family names work as shortcuts too: catppuccin means mocha, gruvbox, solarized, everforest, github and ayu mean the dark variant, and material means material-ocean.

Choosing a theme

Where	How	Remembered?
Config	theme = "catppuccin-mocha" under [main]	Yes
Command line	--theme dracula	No, this run only (REPL and TUI)
REPL	\theme lists themes, \theme nord switches	No
TUI	Ctrl+Y outside the editor, or Switch theme… in the palette. Themes preview as you move; Enter keeps one, Esc goes back.	Yes, for the TUI

The theme you pick in the TUI is saved in ~/.local/share/quarry/ui-state.toml and takes precedence over the config for the TUI from then on. Delete that file to go back to the config's theme. --theme wins over both for one run, and \tui carries the REPL's current theme into the TUI.

Your own theme

Put a file in ~/.config/quarry/themes/ (the themes folder next to your config.toml) and use its name without the extension. Built-in names win over files with the same name.

A quarry palette (.toml)

Start from an existing theme and change what you like:

# ~/.config/quarry/themes/midnight.toml
inherits = "tokyo-night"
dark = true

bg = "#0f111a"
accent = "#ff9e64"
keyword = "#ff9e64"

[main]
theme = "midnight"

Without inherits, a theme starts from tokyo-night. inherits can name a built-in theme or another of your files, up to 8 levels deep.

Colours are "#rrggbb", or a terminal colour name (red, lightblue, gray, …, or reset for the terminal's default). The keys you can set:

Group	Keys
Surfaces	bg, surface (panels, popups), highlight (current line, hovered row), selection, fg, muted, border, border_focus, accent, accent2
SQL	keyword, datatype, function, string, number, comment, operator, identifier, quoted_ident, parameter, punctuation
Values and messages	null, boolean, temporal, json, error, warning, success, info, header

An unknown key or a bad colour is an error that names the file and the key.

A base16 or base24 scheme (.yaml)

Drop any base16 or base24 scheme file into the themes folder, under a name that isn't a built-in theme: save a Nord scheme as nord-base16.yaml and use theme = "nord-base16". Both the classic layout (base00: at the top level) and the newer tinted-theming layout (a palette: map) work. base00–base0F are required; if base10–base17 are all present, quarry uses the extra base24 colours for surfaces and messages. Light or dark is taken from variant:, or worked out from the background.

Colour support

quarry detects what your terminal can show:

• 24-bit colour when COLORTERM is truecolor or 24bit, or the terminal is kitty, Alacritty, Ghostty or WezTerm.
• 256 colours when TERM contains 256color, or in Windows Terminal.
• 16 colours otherwise, and none when TERM=dumb.

Colours are mapped to the nearest one your terminal supports. For an exact match with your terminal's palette, use the ansi theme.

NO_COLOR=1 or --no-color turns colour off, in the REPL and the TUI. Output to a pipe or file is never coloured.

Transparent background

If your terminal has a translucent or image background, let it show through the TUI:

[main]
transparent = true

The theme's background and panel colours go away; text, selections, the status-bar pills and highlights keep their colours. Toggle transparent background in the command palette tries it without editing the config. The REPL never paints a background, so it's unaffected.