Icon Theme Sync

VS Code can switch its color theme automatically between light and dark, but workbench.iconTheme is a single value. An icon theme tuned for a dark background stays put when the editor goes light.

This extension fixes that: pick an icon theme for light and one for dark, and it switches them for you.

Why not just use a setting?

There isn't one. microsoft/vscode#271485 requests preferredLightIconTheme / preferredDarkIconTheme; it sits in the backlog, and an earlier PR adding them was rejected on the grounds that extensions should handle it.

How it works

It follows the active color theme's kind, not the operating system. That distinction matters: if you manually pick a light theme while your OS is still dark, your icons still switch. Extensions and scripts that watch the OS appearance miss that case entirely.

Setup

Run Icon Theme Sync: Configure from the Command Palette and pick an icon theme for light and for dark. Or set them directly:

{
  "iconThemeSync.light": "catppuccin-latte",
  "iconThemeSync.dark": "catppuccin-frappe"
}

The values are icon theme IDs, not display names. The Configure command lists the ID next to each installed theme so you don't have to hunt for it.

Settings

Leaving a setting empty is not a half-configured state — it means "don't touch the icon theme in this case." Clearing both disables the extension without uninstalling it.

Behavior notes

• It writes workbench.iconTheme to your user settings. If you keep settings.json in a dotfiles repo, expect that line to change as you switch.
• It never overwrites an icon theme when the matching setting is empty.
• It skips the write when the correct theme is already active, so multiple open windows don't fight over the file.
• If a configured icon theme isn't installed, it shows an error rather than letting VS Code silently fall back to no icons at all.
• If a workspace or folder pins workbench.iconTheme in its own settings, that override wins, and this extension's write to your user settings won't be visible in that window.
• workbench.iconTheme is a single global value, so with two windows open on different color themes, whichever window changed theme last determines the icons in both. That's inherent to the setting, not a bug in this extension.

License

MIT