Themes#

slides.rs provides a theme system for customizing the appearance of your presentations. Themes control colors and styling for headings, body text, code blocks, and UI elements.

Automatic Light/Dark Detection#

Each theme automatically detects your terminal background and selects the appropriate light or dark variant. This ensures optimal contrast and readability regardless of your terminal settings.

Available Theme Schemes#

The following color schemes are built-in:

basic (default) - IBM's Oxocarbon color palette with clean, modern styling

• Dark variant: Light text on dark background with vibrant accents
• Light variant: Dark text on light background with adjusted colors

monokai - Inspired by the popular Monokai editor theme

• Dark variant: Classic Monokai with pink headings and green code
• Light variant: Adjusted colors for light backgrounds

dracula - Based on the Dracula color scheme

• Dark variant: Purple and cyan tones optimized for dark backgrounds
• Light variant: Darker variants of Dracula colors for light backgrounds

solarized - Ethan Schoonover's Solarized palette

• Dark variant: Solarized Dark with blue headings
• Light variant: Solarized Light with adjusted foreground colors

nord - Arctic-inspired theme with cool tones

• Dark variant: Subtle blues and greens on dark background
• Light variant: Nord colors adjusted for light backgrounds

Using Themes#

Via Frontmatter#

Specify a theme in your slide deck's YAML frontmatter:

---
theme: monokai
---

# Your First Slide

Content here
```

The terminal background will be automatically detected. To force a specific variant:

```markdown
---
theme: solarized:light
---
```

Or with TOML frontmatter:

```markdown
+++
theme = "dracula:dark"
+++

# Your First Slide

Content here

Via Command Line#

Override the theme with the --theme flag:

# Auto-detect terminal background
slides present slides.md --theme nord
slides print slides.md --theme solarized

# Force a specific variant
slides present slides.md --theme monokai:light
slides print slides.md --theme nord:dark

Via Environment Variable#

Set a default theme using the SLIDES_THEME environment variable:

# Auto-detect variant
export SLIDES_THEME=basic
slides present slides.md

# Force specific variant
export SLIDES_THEME=dracula:dark
slides present slides.md

Theme Priority#

When multiple theme sources are specified, the priority order is:

1. Command line flag (--theme)
2. Frontmatter metadata (theme: field)
3. Environment variable (SLIDES_THEME)
4. Default theme

Theme Components#

Each theme defines colors for:

• Headings (level 1-6)
• Body text
• Accent colors
• Code blocks and inline code
• Code fence markers
• Horizontal rules
• List markers (bullets and numbers)
• Blockquote borders
• Table borders

Rendering Features#

The printer uses Unicode box-drawing characters for clean visual output:

• ─ and ═ for horizontal lines
• │ for vertical borders
• ┼ for table intersections
• • for unordered list markers

Tables automatically calculate column widths based on content and available terminal width.