There's a lot of new things going on in the Productivity Power Tools extensions, and I find that many of the new features come with very weird color combinations, that many times make the text completely illegible. I assume this is because I've previously set a dark theme for Visual Studio, and some, but not all, of the settings that affect the extension have been changed.
Are there any good dark themes out there that have been put together after the Productivity Tools Extension was published, that create a unified color theme for both VS and the extension features?
Clarification: This question is not about color schemes for code, such as those found at studiostyles. I'm talking about color schemes that apply to the development environment itself; toolboxes, menus, tooltips, windows, buttons...
Install the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor extension:
Make your own color scheme or try: The Dark Expression Blend Color Theme (preview below)
Once you have that, you'll want schemes for the text editor as well. This site has several, including the VS2012 "dark" theme implemented for VS2010.
There is a style that I've created based on dark style from VS 2015 to use on my VS 2010. You can download this style from Dark Style from VS 2015.
After download it, just import through menu Tools -> Import and Export Settings...
So, I tested above themes and found out none of them are showing proper color combination when using Productivity Power Tools in Visual Studio.
Ultimately, being a fan of dark themes, I created one myself which is fully supported from VS2005 to VS2013.
Here's the screenshot
Download this dark theme from here: Obsidian Meets Visual Studio
To use this theme go to Tools -> Import and Export Setting... -> import selected environment settings -> (optional to save current settings) -> Browse select and then Finish.
Not sure if any of these help, but this might get you started: http://studiostyles.info
I know that the site owner has been gradually adding functionality to allow support for new color assignments, so perhaps there's something there.
You can also try this handy online tool, which generates .vssettings file for you.
Visual Studio Color Theme Generator
Related
My understanding is that there are currently many ways to add new color themes in Visual Studio 2019, but none that really fits my needs:
The extension Color Themes for Visual Studio installs new themes to chose in the native options menu,
The extension Color Theme Editor for Visual Studio 2019 installs a gui to chose and install themes,
The marketplace that contains a category Themes but the selection is scarce compared to the VS Code themes marketplace,
I also stumbled upon Dainty which seems nice but a Group Policy won't let me build themes on my machine, plus I'd rather not use third party software (and install node + yarn) since Visual Studio has a native support.
So, what I am looking for is a way to easily find themes so I don't have to create or build one myself.
More specifically, I'd like to install an equivalent of the theme Winter is Coming Light found in the VS Code marketplace which I cannot use directly in Visual Studio 2019, since they use different theme formats (.vstheme is XML versus JSON for VSCode) and, by extension, any way to browse through a selection of themes as rich as the one we can find on VS Code.
In VS2019 go to Extensions -> Manage Extensions -> Online -> Visual Studio Market Place -> Tools -> Themes ... and you'll have plenty to choose and it includes a link to preview called "More information".
Oh! to use the downloaded theme you should go to Tools -> Options -> Environment -> General and inside it Color Theme.
I love dark themes in my development environments but can't find a way to make the resources editor (particularly strings) of Visual Studio dark too. My VS version is 2015 Professional.
Here's how I see it:
while the rest of the UI looks like this:
There is an extension for the Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise that changes the theme color of every element of the IDE. Just search themes and you get a lot of extensions and 90% of them work, you can even set up some transparent background for your coding environment and even add some music(mostly trance) that changes and helps you concentrate while coding.
If you inspect the resx editor using inspect.exe tool, you can see its a Winforms data grid view. It does not honor WPF styles. According to my understanding VS is built using WPF changes the themes via WPF style feature.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.datagridview(v=vs.110).aspx
Visual Studio Color Theme Editor is an excellent extension for Visual Studio 2010 that can be used to try and apply different themes on the IDE. The theme only changes the chrome or the windowing area of the IDE.
To change the display of code one still has to play around with the settings in the Fonts and Colors dialog or import settings from a .vssettings file. (A variety of styles are available at StudioStyles).
All editors now allow the programmer to try or switch between different styles on the code with a click (like the gorgeous Sublime Text). Is there a Visual Studio extension or external tool that makes it easy to apply and play around with different styles? If not, is there some trick to try or switch between different styles with ease? I find that going through the Import Settings dialog is quite onerous.
Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor extension now allows (from v2.3) to change Font colors using styles (include your own styles). Exactly what do you need.
Version history
2.3 Added support for merging Fonts & Colors customizations with a theme
Update to Visual Studio 2012 and you be able to use either Light or Dark theme. What's is really cool.
Other good suggestion is to check http://studiostyl.es/ - This website provide many variations of color and fonts to use with your Visual Studio (but by now that compatibility is just with vs2005, vs2008 and vs2010)
I have been looking for , lets use the word "mods", for visual studio left and right to be able to change the background and font color of the code editor for quite a while now. This is a simple question and hopefully not a duplicate of Is it possible to change backround color of editor and autocomplete tooltips in Visual Studio?. If I can refine my question a bit more, is it possible to manually change the background color of the code and text editor, or does mods or plugins or addons exist somewhere to do this feature for me? My eyes are straining on the white background...
I am using visual studio 2010
From the main menu, go to Tools -> Options. From there open up Environment -> Fonts and Colors. If you don't want to spent the time configuring it that way (which would be completely understandable), download the theme editor, or pick and download a nice theme at http://studiostyl.es/
Within VS2010 I'm using a dark/pastel color scheme. SP2010 Feature Designer has a Manifest tab with a Preview of Packaged Manifest read-only XML pane.
As you can see from the two screenshots, there is text in the pane, but it's basically invisible due to the background pane color.
Is there any way to change the font color, from that light gray to something else? I've tried changing several display items within Tools\Options\Environment\Fonts and Colors with no luck.
As a last resort, is there a way to change the pane background color? (although I guess it'll change that for the whole VS IDE)
Thanks all.
Feature manifest preview, unselected:
Feature manifest preview, selected:
In the end I've found a workaround for this ... for whoever (?) might care.
Download Visual Studio Color Theme Editor extension.
If you need help choosing some specific UI color, download any desktop color picker tool, i.e. Just Color Picker.
From a VS SharePoint project, open some Feature manifest or Package manifest preview so to apply and check the ongoing results.
From within VS, create a new custom theme based on Default. Sort the items by name and look for the couple ProjectDesignerBackgroundGradientBegin/End.
Change both to some darker color, like 475B7E.
This is how it looks like:
Being a Dark Theme sort of guy I've settled on using the Visual Studio 2012 Dark Theme for Visual Studio 2010 which provides a great new look for VS2010.
You'll also need to install the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor and then import the [VS2012-Dark-for-2010.vstheme] file using the Theme, Customize Colors..., Import Theme meu options.