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Maybe a way to alter the colors locally (as in application dependant)?

A background color of eclipse is white, the same white of windows' active window background color. If I change the color on the theme, eclipse changes to the color.

I want to change this software's color without changing the whole theme (because then every program gets weird colors). Is this possible? I thought that maybe there was a way to apply different windows themes to different programs, or something.

I'm using windows XP, classic windows theme.

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navand
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  • There must be some plug in that can do this, right? – Erik B Jan 15 '11 at 09:48
  • It's even MORE important for mac users: Apple kindly prevents the ability to modify the colors of their windows altogether. Thus there's NO WAY* to change the colors of those windows on a mac. *Yeah, you can "invert" your colors on a mac, but that's a TERRIBLE hack--probably even worse than having a beautiful black source window and being blinded by all the other windows. :( – SMBiggs Jun 11 '12 at 05:32
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    Have a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1933367/how-to-change-background-of-all-views-in-eclipse-ide/1933454#1933454 – user1193134 Aug 13 '13 at 08:32
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    The accepted answer (currently by Matthias Kempka) was probably how it was back then. Currently you can install the Moonrise theme and have it all. See the answer by user3273530! – SPRBRN May 05 '14 at 10:42
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    SPRBRN, Yeah I know. Technical questions don't age well. – navand May 06 '14 at 07:50

7 Answers7

26

Install the "Eclipse 4 Chrome Theme" from http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/eclipse-4-chrome-theme

Then you can customize a lot of the Eclipse UI widgets. But not what you want, at least not out of the box. For that you should go to the CSS tab (in Eclipse 4 Chrome Theme) and paste this:

Tree, List, Table {
  background-color: #202020;
  color: #d0d0d0;
}

You can change almost anything, the problem is finding out what, and the fact that some things are bitmaps that you can't change (so if the bitmap is dark and you set a dark background you will "loose" the bitmap)

This list of widgets might help, http://download.eclipse.org/rt/rap/doc/1.5/help/html/reference/theming/index.html but they give you generic info on the widget names, not the Eclipse info (with IDs and all), so be careful :-)

== Very late addition ==

Everything you need in one place, including links to a custom dark theme: http://mihai-nita.net/2013/09/19/dark-eclipse/

Mac Screen Shot Example as of Sept 2013 (please be sure to restart Eclipse after changing file):

enter image description here

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Mihai Nita
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    Looks like you can also tinker directly with the .css files in {eclipseFolder}\plugins\org.eclipse.platform_4.2.1.v201209141800\css, no plugins required (of course, your version might be slightly different) – Mihai Nita Jan 18 '13 at 17:44
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    "the problem is finding out what" :: You can also install "E4 CSS Editor" and "E4 CSS Spy". Those tools will help you find out what each widget is (the "Spy" part) and temporarily tinker with the styles (the "Editor" part). – Mihai Nita Jun 11 '13 at 21:58
  • Everything you need in one place, including links to a custom dark theme: http://mihai-nita.net/2013/09/19/dark-eclipse/ – Mihai Nita Sep 29 '13 at 03:03
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    for some reason I can't see the new user preset "Dark Eclipse" after unpacking it to `install_path/configuration` and restart. – yair Dec 04 '13 at 20:57
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Just search "Theme" in the Eclipse Market Place. Install Moonrise. (Should be first option). Then go to the General, appearance, Click on appearance, change theme to moonrise, Then there you go.

user3273530
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    Wow, that works. The accepted solution is complicated and simply not true. I entered "Moonrise" in the marketplace, selected the first item, and then selected in general appearance Moonrise (Windows 7 is the default), restarted Eclipse Kepler and presto! – Sarah Weinberger Mar 24 '14 at 22:32
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Knowing the way the workbench is built, I'm sure your request is not possible on the Eclipse side. You can do this for the editors, because they are StyledText widgets, and you are exposed some preferences to customize these. The other views are various widgets, some are Trees, some are Text, some are composed from various other widgets. All of them are created with the default constructor which just uses the Windows theme.

Matthias Kempka
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0

Sadly, this is not possible (which is crazy).
However, Aptana Studio (which is an Eclipse derivative) lets you theme the entire IDE.

Tal Weiss
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0

I did some research and found that actualy it is posible to change all colors, but abit harder. there are two methods that I found so far.

first since eclipse is using OS themes, you can change your OS background settings, like folder background etc., or just change the whole theme if your using windows, but the downside is that all windowses will be same color, in linux and mac os it is also posible, but in different way, I did read it somewhere, but can't remember where :)

second creating a specific theme for eclipse, for example http://rogerdudler.github.io/eclipse-ui-themes/ or any other theme like google chrome etc.

Waras
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Install the theme from here as per the instruction in the github: https:// github.com/guari/eclipse-ui-theme

If you don't like the editor color theme, there are bunch of 'em here http://eclipsecolorthemes.org/

Combination of both just works like charm for me!

Sean
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I don't know of a way to change every Eclipse window to your color scheme, but I can get you at least as far as changing some of the editing windows...

Open up "Window -> Preferences", then under "General | Editors | Text Editors" you will find a section that will allow you to set the "Appearance color options", Background color is one of those options.

PS: I'm using Eclipse 3.6 (Helios)

Gordon
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    I'll also refer you to [this previous answer](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1933367/how-to-change-background-of-all-views-in-eclipse-ide/1933454#1933454) – Gordon Apr 08 '11 at 15:50