Purple Knight Theme
A dark color theme for Visual Studio Code inspired by the classic Visual Studio IDE look — built on top of VS Code's own Dark+ syntax foundation, with the iconic Visual Studio purple (#68217A). Dedicated to all coders who are forced to code .NET in VS Code due to the cost of professional version of Visual Studio.
Features
- Faithful syntax highlighting — classes, methods, interfaces, structs, enums, and namespaces are colored to match real Visual Studio conventions (teal classes, yellow methods, light green interfaces), tuned specifically for a clean C# development experience while remaining fully usable across other languages.
- Signature purple chrome — the Activity Bar, Side Bar, and Status Bar use deep purple tones drawn from Visual Studio's brand palette, instead of the flat grays/blues found in most default themes.
- Purple accents throughout the workspace:
- A subtle purple highlight when dragging or resizing panels (sash hover)
- A clean purple top-border on the active editor tab, with no distracting bottom border
- Purple hover/active states on status bar items and clickable controls
- Semantic highlighting enabled — works with language servers (like the C# extension) to color classes, methods, and variables based on actual code meaning, not just pattern matching.
Preview
| Area |
Look |
| Activity Bar & Side Bar |
Deep purple-black (#2d1e3e / #241a30) with lavender icons |
| Status Bar |
Matches Activity Bar tone for a cohesive shell |
| Active Tab |
Clean purple top accent, no bottom border |
| Editor |
Neutral dark background so syntax colors stay legible and unclashing |
Installation
- Open Extensions in VS Code (
Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X).
- Search for Purple Knight Theme.
- Click Install.
- Open the Command Palette (
Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) → Preferences: Color Theme → select Purple Knight Theme.
Or install manually from a .vsix file:
code --install-extension purple-knight-theme-<version>.vsix
Recommended settings
For the closest match to the intended look, especially around title bar theming:
{
"window.titleBarStyle": "custom",
"editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": true
}
Requirements
No dependencies — this is a pure color theme with no bundled extensions or external requirements. For full C#-specific semantic coloring (classes/methods resolved by meaning rather than pattern), install the C# extension or C# Dev Kit.
Known limitations
- VS Code's theming API doesn't support a full 4-sided border around a single, unsplit editor pane — the active tab uses a top-only accent border instead, the closest native equivalent.
- Tab-to-tab separator lines apply uniformly across all tabs; there's no way to style only the active tab's side borders differently through theme colors alone.
Release Notes
1.0.0
- Initial release of Purple Knight Theme
- Full C#-aware syntax coloring (classes, interfaces, structs, enums, namespaces, methods)
- Purple-themed Activity Bar, Side Bar, and Status Bar
- Custom tab, sash, and drag-highlight accents
Contributing
Found a scope that isn't colored right, or a UI element that should be more (or less) purple? Open an issue or PR on the repository — happy to keep refining this as more edge cases turn up.
License
MIT
Enjoy coding with a little more purple.
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