Holdens Theme

IntelliJ IDEA's Islands Dark UI with the Dark editor scheme for VS Code, including file and folder icons and extra Kotlin highlighting. The palette and JetBrains icons come from the bundled IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2.3 resources.

This extension is 100% vibe coded.

Install

Requires VS Code 1.85 or newer on desktop.

Open Holdens Theme on the Marketplace and choose Install, or find BentHolden.holdens-theme in VS Code's Extensions view. The publisher is BentHolden.

You can also install it from a terminal with the VS Code CLI:

code --install-extension BentHolden.holdens-theme

Select the theme and icons

1. Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux).
2. Run Preferences: Color Theme and choose Islands Dark - Dark.
3. Run Preferences: File Icon Theme and choose Islands File Icons.

These are the picker names even though the extension is called Holdens Theme. The color theme and icon theme can be selected independently.

Alternatively, merge these entries into your user settings:

{
  "workbench.colorTheme": "Islands Dark - Dark",
  "workbench.iconTheme": "islands-file-icons"
}

Colors and icons apply when selected. Extra Kotlin highlighting activates when you open a file whose language mode is Kotlin, with Islands Dark - Dark selected.

Colors and highlighting

The theme covers editor and workbench colors, terminal ANSI colors, Git changes, search results, diff and merge views, debugging and inlay hints. Syntax rules cover Java, Kotlin, JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML/XML, CSS, JSON/YAML, Markdown and diff files.

Kotlin highlighting adds annotation names, primary constructor properties (val/var), named argument labels and resolved extension function calls. Extension function coloring requires a Kotlin language extension that provides resolved hover signatures. Ordinary calls keep their normal color while the language service loads or when it cannot resolve a signature.

Syntax and semantic highlighting depend on the installed language extensions. For example, Java imports need semantic annotation tokens to distinguish imported annotation names from other imports. The theme's Kotlin corrections run only while Islands Dark - Dark is selected.

File and folder icons

Islands File Icons combines Seti file associations with JetBrains icons.

Folder icons use folder names, so they do not identify source roots from a project model. Both light and dark icon variants are included.

Customization and troubleshooting

The theme uses your current editor and terminal fonts. Choose your preferred fonts in VS Code's settings.

If colors differ from the palette, check workbench.colorCustomizations, editor.tokenColorCustomizations and editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations: existing overrides take precedence. Kotlin correction colors can be adjusted through workbench.colorCustomizations using islands.annotationForeground, islands.propertyForeground, islands.namedArgumentForeground and islands.extensionFunctionForeground.

If Kotlin extension calls are not blue, check the file's language mode, wait for the Kotlin language service to load the project, and confirm that hovering the call shows a resolved signature.

The extension supplies colors, icons and highlighting. IntelliJ's panel shapes, spacing and toolbar arrangement are outside VS Code's theme API.

For Double Shift navigation, install the separate Holdens Search extension.

Build from source

From the repository root, use Python 3.9 or newer to build the VSIX:

python3 theme/scripts/package_theme.py

Run Extensions: Install from VSIX... and select the generated file in theme/dist/. For development, run node --test theme/tests/*.test.cjs with Node.js 22 or newer. Open theme/ as a VS Code workspace and press F5 to preview changes in an Extension Development Host; select Islands Dark - Dark there as well. The theme/examples/ files provide Java and Kotlin samples.

Sources and license

UI colors derive from JetBrains' ManyIslandsDark.theme.json; editor colors come from expUI_darkScheme.xml and the Darcula defaults. Resource hashes, icon origins and attribution are recorded in the packaged NOTICE and ThirdPartyNotices.txt files. The extension uses Apache-2.0 and includes assets under their original licenses.

See VS Code's Color Theme API and semantic token theming guide for the underlying color settings. JetBrains and IntelliJ IDEA are trademarks of their respective owners.