Show HN: My Terminal Themes Web App

41 points by bado 1 day ago | 17 comments

Well, after 15 years of saying "Someday I'll turn this into a web app," I finally did it!

I've been maintaining a popular repo of terminal themes at https://github.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes, and it was finally time to build the app with all the features I wanted!

So, the next-gen version is live at https://terminalthemes.com! It currently has over 800 themes, and provides downloads for close to 40 different formats (iTerm, Ghostty, Windows, and many more)

It's free for everyone. An account is not needed to browse and download, but registering for an account (free) allows you to vote, bookmark, submit themes, etc.

I focused on a11y features for those who need it, in addition to adding Find My Theme and other tools to make it easy to find something you like!

Live terminal and code previews help show a more realistic view of the terminal, as opposed to the ANSI screenshots used at the GitHub repository. Those are still there, for those who like them.

I would love for you guys to check it out and provide feedback, feature suggestions, whatever!

And a huge thanks to the community of people that have contributed themes, ports to other terminals, and tools to provide conversions between formats over the years.

Oh! And if you've ever contributed themes to the GitHub repo, please register for an account, find your theme(s), and hit the Claim Authorship button!

nmstoker 1 day ago |

Very nice site.

Out of interest, are they automatically classed as light or dark? For instance by some heuristic or algorithm. I saw it's reporting some contrast measures which is handy.

I wonder how feasible it might be to use some colour distance heuristics to find similar themes: then if you find one you mostly like but it's slightly off due to some preference, you can still easily browse that "neighborhood"

bado 1 day ago | |

Hi there!

They're classified automatically, though I did make it so I can change the light/dark classification in the Admin tools if something is off.

Since the Similar Themes functionality was built, there has been work done on accessibility, tags, and the color profiles, so Similar may need to be revisited for its classification. I'll note to check that

Also, there is a Find My Theme link in the nav that asks a few visual preference questions, then shows themes related to the answers. If you have feedback about that, and what works/doesn't work well for you, I'd love to hear it!

Thanks!

joshka 18 hours ago |

Love your work on this and the previous site. Thanks!!!

One comment I had (I think I may have posted something like this on a github issue too) is that the site has that feel a bit of the sort of UI from the early 2000s - like helm, or cold fusion dashboards. There's something about it that screams developer generated UI rather than designer influenced. The light mode looks ok, but the greys on the dark mode don't feel particularly scream well suited to a theme website. (Obv. just my purely subjective opinion here).

The swatches preview on the search results pages probably should be much smaller swatches - similar to the copy embed perhaps. And the background of the top part of the card should match the background of the theme.

bado 17 hours ago | |

Heya! Thanks for the kind words and the feedback! Yeah, I'm still iterating on things and tweaking UI stuff, but these suggestions definitely help. I am more interested in the site's usefulness as opposed to modern design and don't really know how to get both without losing the functionality, etc. But over time, it will get better!

Thanks!

sprobertson 12 hours ago |

It would be nice to freeze the terminal preview after it generates the text for when you want to flip between color modes and color vision settings. Otherwise it gets annoying to wait for each one to complete the animation.

bado 54 minutes ago | |

Yeah I've noticed that myself and have it as a roadmap item to look into. Thanks for the feedback!

blackfawn 1 day ago |

Very neat! One thing I noticed is the "remember" function doesn't seem to work properly. It seems functional when defaulted to iTerm but when I deselect that and pick some I actually use, the button seems to be disabled as it is unclickable. I imagine the account-based version would help but I haven't tried that yet.

bado 1 day ago | |

You can set it if you have an Account, in your preferences. I don't think I built it in for stickiness in the guest mode, so that's great feedback. I'll check it out. I do preserve other settings in guest mode, and that one may have been overlooked.

Thanks!

manu29d 1 day ago |

Oh my. I have been using that repo and the themes on any new computer I have setup in the past 8-10 years at least (can't remember exactly, this repo is older than my career). I tried finding alternatives. While some worked, I have seen myself coming back to this repo again and again. Thank you for maintaining it for so long.

bado 1 day ago | |

Oh wow, thanks! I'm glad the repo has been useful to you all these years! It was surprising how it took off years ago! I've had people mention it to me at tech gatherings, and a few times it randomly showed up on a few of the Helpful Tools lists at companies I've worked for, when the person who created the list had no idea I was the maintainer

Thanks for the kind words!

bado 1 day ago |

I forgot to mention, themes added to TT do sync back to the GitHub repository, and vice versa!

d0utone 1 day ago |

Awesome. I would make the themes much more visible on the main feed so that you can scroll through them on the phone and get a good impression. For me they were way too small so you end up entering every page to get a better glimpse.

ryannevius 1 day ago | |

Yeah, I was expecting something more similar to https://vimcolorschemes.com/i/trending

bado 1 day ago | |

I haven't focused much on mobile yet, but it is in the plans. Thanks for the feedback!

boltzmann64 1 day ago |

https://terminal.sexy/

BaudouinVH 1 day ago |

my humble effort in that direction : https://terminal-theme-studio.pages.dev/

bado 1 day ago | |

Nice!

ravsg 1 day ago |

keep going