windowsterminalthemes.dev

Windows Terminal Themes (windowsterminalthemes.dev) is a browser-based gallery of hundreds of color schemes for Windows Terminal. To choose one, narrow the list with the Dark or Light filter, click through candidate themes, and judge each on the same three previews: the codeblock, the terminal mock-up, and the color swatches. Pick the theme whose preview stays readable for the text you actually look at all day — usually code and shell output — rather than the one with the most striking palette.

What the site gives you to compare with

The gallery is a single-page app, so you need JavaScript enabled for it to render. Once loaded, the comparison surface is consistent across every theme:

• Dark / Light filters — two selectors at the top of the list. Use them first to cut the catalog roughly in half.
• Codeblock preview — shows syntax-highlighted sample code (the page's own sample includes CRA compile output, Cypress run, and Jest pass/fail lines).
• Terminal preview — a mock terminal showing shell-style output, including a local dev server message with http://localhost:3000/themes and a network URL.
• Colours preview — the full swatch set for the theme, so you can see the 16 ANSI colors plus background and foreground at a glance.
• Theme name and list navigation — a scrollable name list (3024 Night, Aardvark Blue, Abernathy, Adventure, Afterglow, and on through Dracula, Gruvbox, Kanagawa, Material, and many more), with Prev / Next controls and a credit line for the current theme.

Because every theme is shown through the same previews, you are comparing like with like. That is the main reason to use this site instead of pasting schemes one at a time into your terminal.

A practical comparison workflow

1. Filter by background first. If you work in a bright room or prefer high contrast, start with Light; otherwise start with Dark. This is the single biggest cut.
2. Scan names you recognize. Familiar families — Dracula, Gruvbox, Catppuccin (Frappe / Macchiato / Mocha), Solarized, Material, One-style variants, Tokyo-Night-adjacent options like Kanagawa — give you a known baseline. If you already like one of these elsewhere, compare its variants here rather than starting from scratch.
3. Read the codeblock, not the palette. Ask: can I tell a string from a keyword from a comment without squinting? Syntax highlighting is where most themes fail.
4. Check the terminal preview for prompt and output legibility. Look at the dim/comment colors and the "failed" style lines — those are the ones that disappear in low-contrast themes.
5. Open the Colours view. Confirm the ANSI colors are distinguishable from each other. Red vs. magenta and blue vs. cyan are the usual collisions.
6. Shortlist two or three, then switch between them using Prev / Next to compare back-to-back. Side-by-side beats memory.
7. Copy the one you want and apply it in Windows Terminal's settings.

What to weigh when two themes look equally good

A theme that wins on palette aesthetics but loses on the dim-color row is usually the wrong pick for a terminal you stare at daily.

Common sticking points

• Blank page or no theme list. The app requires JavaScript; if the list never appears, that is the cause, not a missing theme.
• Preview looks different from your real terminal. The preview uses the site's own font and rendering. Your terminal's font, ligatures, and opacity will change the result — treat the preview as a color guide, not a pixel-accurate mock-up.
• Two names look identical. Some entries are near-duplicates or variants (for example the Catppuccin set, or Dracula vs. Dracula+). Compare them directly with Prev / Next rather than assuming they are the same.
• You like the colors but not the contrast. Many families ship both a standard and a "hard"/darker variant (GruvboxDark vs. GruvboxDarkHard is the classic case). Try the sibling before abandoning the family.

Choosing, in one line

Filter dark or light, shortlist by familiar family names, then pick the theme whose codeblock and terminal previews you can read fastest — and confirm the ANSI swatches are all distinct before you copy it.

The previews on Windows Terminal Themes show how a theme will look in three different contexts before you copy it: a simulated terminal session, an ANSI colour test, and a syntax-highlighted code block. Together they let you judge contrast, readability, and colour balance without installing anything. You switch between them with the Terminal, Colours, and Codeblock selectors at the top of the page, and the preview updates to match whichever theme is currently selected.

The three preview modes

Terminal preview

This mode simulates a real command-line session. The excerpt on the site shows output such as a compiled build, a running test suite, and a local development server address:

CRA - compiled
Cypress - run
Jest - failed
Jest - running
Compiled successfully!
You can now view terminal in the browser.
Local: http://localhost:3000/themes
On Your Network: http://192.168.86.37:3000/themes

Use it to check the things you actually stare at all day: default foreground text on the background, dimmed or secondary output, and success/failure lines. If a theme makes "Jest - failed" and "Compiled successfully!" hard to tell apart at a glance, that is a practical problem, not just an aesthetic one.

Colours test preview

This mode lays out the ANSI colour slots — the standard palette that programs use for red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, and their bright variants, plus black and the background/foreground entries. Because so many CLI tools, prompts, and loggers map their output onto these sixteen slots, this view tells you whether the palette is coherent: whether the bright colours are distinguishable from the normal ones, whether the reds and greens stay readable against the background, and whether any slot is so dark it disappears.

Codeblock preview

This mode shows syntax highlighting colours, so you can see how keywords, strings, comments, and other token types are coloured. This matters if you spend time in editors, git diff, or any tool that colourises source. A theme can look fine in a plain terminal and still produce low-contrast comments or clashing string colours here.

Why the three views matter together

A theme that passes one preview can fail another. A palette with a pleasant background may have a red ANSI slot that is nearly invisible, or syntax colours that were never tuned for that background. Checking all three before copying is the fastest way to avoid pasting a theme, restarting the terminal, and immediately reverting it.

Practical checks before you copy

• Contrast first. Confirm body text is comfortable against the background, not just technically visible.
• Compare similar colours. In the Colours view, check that red and magenta, or blue and cyan, don't blur together.
• Test your worst case. If you read a lot of logs, look at the failure lines in the Terminal preview; if you read code, look at comments in the Codeblock preview.
• Switch themes in place. The theme list (from 3024 Night and Aardvark Blue through to entries like Dracula, GruvboxDark, and Catppuccin variants) lets you move between options while the preview stays open, so you can compare candidates back to back.

Once a theme looks right in all three views, you can copy it and apply it to Windows Terminal. The previews are a screening step, not a guarantee — your own font, font size, and monitor will still affect the final result — but they catch the obvious mismatches before you commit.

You apply a theme from windowsterminalthemes.dev by copying its color scheme JSON, pasting it into the schemes array in Windows Terminal's settings.json, then referencing that scheme's name in your profile or defaults. This works for any theme on the site, and the change takes effect as soon as you save the file — no restart required in most recent versions of Windows Terminal.

What you need before starting

• Windows Terminal installed (any recent version that supports color schemes).
• Access to settings.json. Open Windows Terminal, click the dropdown arrow, and choose Settings. In current versions this opens the Settings UI; use Open JSON file (bottom-left) to edit the raw file.
• A theme you like from windowsterminalthemes.dev. The site lists hundreds of options such as Dracula, GruvboxDark, Catppuccin Mocha, One Half Dark, and Nord-style palettes, with a live preview of terminal output and a codeblock preview.

Step 1: Copy the color scheme

1. Go to windowsterminalthemes.dev.
2. Use Select dark themes or Select light themes to filter, then pick a theme from the list (for example, 3024 Night or Dracula).
3. Copy the color scheme JSON the site provides for that theme.

The site shows a preview of how the theme looks in a terminal and in a codeblock, so you can judge contrast before committing. Note that the page requires JavaScript to run — if the theme list or preview doesn't load, enable JavaScript in your browser.

Step 2: Paste it into settings.json

Open settings.json and find the "schemes" array. It looks like this:

"schemes": [
    {
        "name": "Existing Scheme",
        "background": "#000000",
        ...
    }
],

Paste the copied scheme as a new object inside that array, separated from the previous entry by a comma:

"schemes": [
    {
        "name": "Existing Scheme",
        ...
    },
    {
        "name": "3024 Night",
        "background": "#090300",
        "foreground": "#a5a2a2",
        "cursorColor": "#a5a2a2",
        "selectionBackground": "#4a4543",
        "black": "#090300",
        ...
    }
],

Keep the "name" value exactly as the theme provides it — you'll reference it in the next step, and a mismatch means the scheme won't be found.

Step 3: Point a profile (or all profiles) at the scheme

To apply the theme to one profile, add colorScheme to that profile:

{
    "name": "Windows PowerShell",
    "colorScheme": "3024 Night"
}

To apply it everywhere, put it in "defaults" instead:

"defaults": {
    "colorScheme": "3024 Night"
}

defaults applies to every profile unless a profile overrides it with its own colorScheme.

Step 4: Save and verify

Save settings.json. Windows Terminal reloads the file automatically, so the new colors should appear immediately. If nothing changes:

• Check for JSON errors. A missing comma or stray bracket breaks the whole file. Windows Terminal usually shows an error and offers to open the file for repair.
• Confirm the scheme name matches. The string in colorScheme must match the name field in the scheme object character for character, including capitalization.
• Verify the scheme is inside schemes. A scheme pasted outside the array is ignored.
• Restart if needed. Older builds may require closing and reopening the terminal.

Choosing a theme

The site's filters and previews are the practical way to decide. Dark themes suit low-light environments and are the majority of the catalog; light themes work better in bright rooms or for projection. Use the codeblock preview to check whether syntax colors stay readable, and the terminal preview to check foreground/background contrast. Themes like Dracula, GruvboxDark, and Catppuccin variants are widely used and tend to have well-tested contrast, but the right pick depends on your display and preference.

Common pitfalls

• Copying only part of the JSON. The scheme needs all color keys to render correctly; copy the full block.
• Editing the Settings UI instead of JSON. The UI can change colors per profile, but adding a named scheme is done in settings.json.
• Duplicate scheme names. Two schemes with the same name cause unpredictable results — rename one.
• Assuming the site installs anything. windowsterminalthemes.dev is a browse-and-copy catalog; you apply themes manually through settings.json.

Windows Terminal Themes (windowsterminalthemes.dev) is a browser-based gallery of color schemes for Windows Terminal. It lets you browse hundreds of dark and light themes, preview how each one looks in a simulated terminal and color swatch view, and copy a theme's color definitions for use in your Windows Terminal settings. It's useful if you want a new look for your terminal but don't want to hand-pick every color value yourself.

What the site actually offers

The site is a single-purpose catalog. Based on its own description, it hosts "hundreds of themes for Windows Terminal," and the interface exposes them through a few controls:

• Dark themes / Light themes selectors — filter the catalog by background style.
• A theme list — a long scrollable index of named schemes (for example, 3024 Night, Dracula, GruvboxDark, Catppuccin Mocha, One Half Dark, and many more).
• A codeblock preview — shows the theme applied to sample terminal output, including lines like CRA - compiled, Jest - failed, and a local dev server message.
• A colours test preview — displays the theme's palette as swatches so you can judge the full color range, not just the main text color.
• A "credit" line — attributes the currently selected theme (for example, "credit: 3024 Night - 0x3024"), which helps you trace a scheme back to its origin.

The catalog mixes well-known schemes (Dracula, Gruvbox, Solarized variants, Catppuccin) with less common ones, so it works both as a discovery tool and as a quick reference when you already know the name of a theme you want.

How you'd use it

The typical workflow is browse → preview → copy → paste into Windows Terminal:

1. Filter with the dark or light selector to narrow the list to the style you want.
2. Click through themes and watch the codeblock and colour previews update. The codeblock shows how text, errors, and success messages read against the background; the swatches show the full 16-color palette.
3. Copy the theme once you find one you like. The site is built to let you copy a theme's color definitions directly.
4. Paste into Windows Terminal. In Windows Terminal, open Settings, find your profile or the schemes array in settings.json, and add the copied scheme. Then reference it by name in the profile's colorScheme field.

The exact copy button and paste location depend on the current version of both the site and Windows Terminal, so treat the steps above as the shape of the task rather than a fixed menu path.

What to check before relying on it

• JavaScript is required. The site's own page states "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app." With scripting disabled, you'll see nothing useful.
• It's a gallery, not a manager. The site helps you find and copy themes; it doesn't install them or sync them across machines for you.
• Theme names can collide or vary. Similar names (for example, multiple Catppuccin and Gruvbox entries) mean you should preview rather than assume a name matches a scheme you've seen elsewhere.
• Verify contrast yourself. The previews are a guide, but your font, font size, and monitor affect readability. Check the colour swatches for any low-contrast pairs before committing.

Who it's for

If you already use Windows Terminal and want to change its appearance without building a palette from scratch, this site removes most of the work: you pick a name, preview it, and copy the values. If you need a theme for a different terminal emulator, the color values may still be reusable, but the site is aimed specifically at Windows Terminal.