Configuration

Theme

Use a custom theme by placing a theme.toml in your config directory (i.e ~/.config/helix/theme.toml). The default theme.toml can be found here, and user submitted themes here.

Styles in theme.toml are specified of in the form:

key = { fg = "#ffffff", bg = "#000000", modifiers = ["bold", "italic"] }

where name represents what you want to style, fg specifies the foreground color, bg the background color, and modifiers is a list of style modifiers. bg and modifiers can be omitted to defer to the defaults.

To specify only the foreground color:

key = "#ffffff"

if the key contains a dot '.', it must be quoted to prevent it being parsed as a dotted key.

"key.key" = "#ffffff"

Possible modifiers:

Modifier
`bold`
`dim`
`italic`
`underlined`
`slow\_blink`
`rapid\_blink`
`reversed`
`hidden`
`crossed\_out`

Possible keys:

Key	Notes
`attribute`
`keyword`
`keyword.directive`	Preprocessor directives (#if in C)
`namespace`
`punctuation`
`punctuation.delimiter`
`operator`
`special`
`property`
`variable`
`variable.parameter`
`type`
`type.builtin`
`constructor`
`function`
`function.macro`
`function.builtin`
`comment`
`variable.builtin`
`constant`
`constant.builtin`
`string`
`number`
`escape`	Escaped characters
`label`	For lifetimes
`module`
`ui.background`
`ui.linenr`
`ui.linenr.selected`	For lines with cursors
`ui.statusline`
`ui.popup`
`ui.window`
`ui.help`
`ui.text`
`ui.text.focus`
`ui.menu.selected`
`ui.selection`	For selections in the editing area
`warning`	LSP warning
`error`	LSP error
`info`	LSP info
`hint`	LSP hint

These keys match tree-sitter scopes. We half-follow the common scopes from macromates language grammars with some differences.

For a given highlight produced, styling will be determined based on the longest matching theme key. So it's enough to provide function to highlight function.macro and function.builtin as well, but you can use more specific scopes to highlight specific cases differently.