Themes

Raffi supports dark and light themes with full color customization.

Built-in Themes

Raffi includes built-in dark and light theme presets:

dark — Sleek Obsidian dark palette (default)
light — Rose Pine Dawn light palette
catppuccin / catppuccin-mocha — Catppuccin Mocha dark palette
catppuccin-latte — Catppuccin Latte light palette
tokyo-night / tokyonight — Tokyo Night dark palette
nord — Nord dark palette
gruvbox — Gruvbox dark palette
dracula — Dracula dark palette
rose-pine / rosepine — Rosé Pine dark palette
kanagawa — Kanagawa Wave dark palette

Selecting a Theme

Command Line

raffi -t dark

raffi -t light

raffi -t catppuccin

Configuration File

general:
  theme: dark  # or "light", "catppuccin", "tokyo-night", "nord", "gruvbox", "dracula", "rose-pine", "kanagawa"

Dark Theme
Light Theme

general:
  theme: dark

Sleek Obsidian dark palette with crisp slate text and indigo accents

general:
  theme: light

Terminal Colours

Each theme also has its own 16-colour terminal palette, taken from the theme’s terminal port. Raffi uses it for basic ANSI colours in previews and Script Filter titles, so \e[31m is the theme’s red rather than a generic one. 256-colour and 24-bit colours are drawn as given. A palette colour that would be unreadable on the preview background, such as black on a dark theme, is replaced: a bright colour by its normal shade, otherwise by the muted text colour.

Preview commands and Script Filter previews receive the theme in the environment, so they can match their own colours to it:

Variable	Value
`RAFFI_THEME`	Theme name, such as `catppuccin-mocha` or `dark`
`RAFFI_THEME_MODE`	`dark` or `light`
`RAFFI_THEME_FG`, `RAFFI_THEME_MUTED`, `RAFFI_THEME_ACCENT`, `RAFFI_THEME_BG`	Main text, muted text, accent and background colours as `#rrggbb`, after any `theme_colors` overrides

The bundled file previewer uses these to pick a matching bat and Markdown theme.

Custom Colors

Individual theme colors can be customized under theme_colors. Only the colors you specify are overridden; the rest come from the base theme.

Available Color Keys

bg_base string

Main background color

bg_input string

Search input background color

accent string

Primary accent color (highlights, active items)

accent_hover string

Accent color on hover

text_main string

Primary text color

text_muted string

Secondary/muted text color

selection_bg string

Selected item background

border string

Border and separator colors

Color Format

Colors accept hex color strings in these formats:

#RGB - Short form (e.g., #f0f)
#RRGGBB - Standard form (e.g., #ff00ff)
#RRGGBBAA - With alpha channel (e.g., #ff00ff80)

Custom Color Examples

Catppuccin Mocha

general:
  theme: dark
  theme_colors:
    bg_base: "#1e1e2e"
    bg_input: "#313244"
    accent: "#cba6f7"
    accent_hover: "#89b4fa"
    text_main: "#cdd6f4"
    text_muted: "#6c7086"
    selection_bg: "#45475a"
    border: "#585b70"

Nord

general:
  theme: dark
  theme_colors:
    bg_base: "#2e3440"
    bg_input: "#3b4252"
    accent: "#88c0d0"
    accent_hover: "#81a1c1"
    text_main: "#eceff4"
    text_muted: "#d8dee9"
    selection_bg: "#434c5e"
    border: "#4c566a"

Gruvbox Dark

general:
  theme: dark
  theme_colors:
    bg_base: "#282828"
    bg_input: "#3c3836"
    accent: "#d79921"
    accent_hover: "#fabd2f"
    text_main: "#ebdbb2"
    text_muted: "#a89984"
    selection_bg: "#504945"
    border: "#665c54"

Solarized Light

general:
  theme: light
  theme_colors:
    bg_base: "#fdf6e3"
    bg_input: "#eee8d5"
    accent: "#268bd2"
    accent_hover: "#2aa198"
    text_main: "#657b83"
    text_muted: "#93a1a1"
    selection_bg: "#eee8d5"
    border: "#93a1a1"

Tokyo Night

general:
  theme: dark
  theme_colors:
    bg_base: "#1a1b26"
    bg_input: "#24283b"
    accent: "#7aa2f7"
    accent_hover: "#bb9af7"
    text_main: "#c0caf5"
    text_muted: "#565f89"
    selection_bg: "#292e42"
    border: "#414868"

Partial Color Override

You can override just a few colors while keeping the rest from the base theme:

general:
  theme: dark
  theme_colors:
    accent: "#ff6b9d"  # Custom pink accent
    # All other colors use dark theme defaults

Transparency and Blur

The window background is see-through by default, like Vicinae. opacity scales the background colours (window, search box, selection and preview pane) from 0.0, fully see-through, to 1.0, the theme as designed. Text, icons, accents and borders stay opaque. The default is 0.95. --opacity overrides it for one run.

general:
  opacity: 0.75   # 1 for a solid window
  blur: true      # default

Colours set with #RRGGBBAA in theme_colors keep their alpha and are scaled by opacity too.

Transparency needs the GPU renderer: the software renderer draws an opaque window on Wayland. The default renderer: auto uses the GPU when opacity is below 1, and the faster software renderer at opacity: 1. With renderer: cpu, opacity is ignored.

Blurring what shows through is up to the compositor:

KDE Plasma (KWin) blurs the window when blur is true, which it is by default.
Hyprland blurs translucent windows when decoration:blur:enabled is on, which it is by default.

niri 26.04 and later blur when a window rule asks for it:

window-rule {
    match app-id="^com\\.chmouel\\.raffi$"
    background-effect { blur true; }
}

SwayFX blurs with for_window [app_id="com.chmouel.raffi"] blur enable. Plain Sway has no blur.

The app ID is com.chmouel.raffi unless you change it with --app-name. Without a compositor (bare X11), or when no GPU is usable, the see-through parts can render black: set opacity: 1 there.

Font Customization

Combine theme customization with font settings:

general:
  theme: dark
  theme_colors:
    accent: "#cba6f7"
  font_family: "Inter"
  font_size: 20
  window_width: 900
  window_height: 500

Font Settings

font_family string

Font family name (e.g., “Inter”, “Fira Sans”). System default sans-serif when omitted.

font_size number (default: 20)

Base font size in pixels. Other UI sizes scale proportionally:

Input text: 1.2× base
Subtitles: 0.7× base
Hints: 0.6× base

window_width number (default: 800)

Window width in pixels

window_height number (default: 600)

Window height in pixels

padding number

Outer window padding in pixels. Scales with font_size if not set.

general:
  theme: dark
  theme_colors:
    bg_base: "#1e1e2e"
    bg_input: "#313244"
    accent: "#cba6f7"
    accent_hover: "#89b4fa"
    text_main: "#cdd6f4"
    text_muted: "#6c7086"
    selection_bg: "#45475a"
    border: "#585b70"
  font_family: "Inter"
  font_size: 20
  window_width: 900
  window_height: 500

general:
  theme: light
  theme_colors:
    accent: "#0066cc"
    accent_hover: "#0052a3"
  font_family: "Fira Sans"
  font_size: 18
  window_width: 800
  window_height: 600