Delphi IDE Theme

A Delphi-inspired theme for Visual Studio Code and Kiro IDE.

A color theme based on the Delphi 11 Alexandria editor, designed to capture the familiar look and feel of the original IDE — including CNPack-inspired structural highlighting.

Whether you're maintaining legacy applications or building modern Object Pascal projects, Delphi IDE Theme makes VS Code feel like home.

Delphi IDE Theme

✨ Features

🎨 Based on the Delphi 11 Alexandria color palette
🌙 Dark theme
☀️ Light theme
🌈 CNPack-inspired 6-level structural highlighting
🔥 Carefully tuned Object Pascal syntax highlighting
🚀 Compatible with Visual Studio Code and Kiro IDE
❤️ Built by a Delphi developer for the Delphi community

📸 Preview

The screenshots below compare the original Delphi IDE with Delphi IDE Theme running in Visual Studio Code.

Delphi IDE	VS Code

Delphi IDE (Light)	VS Code (Light)

🎨 Included Themes

Delphi IDE Dark

Designed to capture the default Delphi 11 Alexandria Dark theme.

Highlights include:

Reserved words in warm gold
Comments in green (italic)
Strings in blue
Numbers in magenta
Classes, Records and Interfaces highlighted in red
CNPack-inspired structural keyword coloring

Delphi IDE Light

A light version preserving the same semantic structure while adapting colors for light backgrounds.

Highlights include:

Reserved words in navy blue (bold)
Comments in green (italic)
Strings in blue
Numbers in blue
Classes, Records and Interfaces highlighted in dark red
Same CNPack structural keyword coloring as the dark theme

🌈 Structural Highlighting

One of Delphi's most recognizable editor features is the structural coloring of nested blocks.

Supported keywords include:

begin
end
if
then
else
case
for
while
repeat
until
try
except
finally
raise
break
continue
exit

Depth	Color	Hex
1	Red	`#FA0000`
2	Orange	`#FF9900`
3	Green	`#59CB33`
4	Turquoise	`#00CED1`
5	Blue	`#4169E1`
6	Purple	`#9B59B6`

After level 6, the color cycle repeats.

📦 Installation

Install directly from the Visual Studio Code Marketplace.

Search for:

Delphi IDE Theme

or install manually:

code --install-extension delphi-ide-theme-x.x.x.vsix

🎛️ Customization

You can personalize the Delphi IDE Dark theme appearance through VS Code settings.

Open Settings (Ctrl+,) and search for delphiTheme:

Setting	Default	Description
`delphiTheme.ideBackground`	`#15141B`	IDE chrome background (sidebar, activity bar, status bar, menus, terminal)
`delphiTheme.editorBackground`	`#110F18`	Editor area and gutter background
`delphiTheme.primaryColor`	`#BBBBBC`	Accent color for buttons, badges, focus indicators, and active tab border

Changes apply immediately — no reload needed.

🔧 Required Pascal Extension

This theme requires a Pascal extension that provides TextMate grammar scopes and language support for .pas, .dpr, .dpk, and .inc files. Without it, Pascal files open as plain text and the theme cannot apply any syntax highlighting.

Pascal by Alessandro Fragnani is the recommended extension and the one this theme was developed and tested with.

Also available on Open VSX Registry for Kiro IDE and other VS Code-compatible editors.

Also recommended

indent-rainbow — colorizes indentation levels, complementing the structural highlighting

🛣️ Roadmap

✅ Delphi IDE Dark
✅ Delphi IDE Light
✅ CNPack structural highlighting
🔄 Improved semantic token support
🔄 Additional Delphi language coverage
🔄 Future Delphi version refinements

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, suggestions and bug reports are always welcome.

If you find any syntax highlighting that differs from the Delphi IDE, feel free to open an Issue.

⚠️ Disclaimer

This is an independent open-source project inspired by the visual appearance of the Delphi IDE.

It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Embarcadero Technologies or the CNPack project.

All trademarks belong to their respective owners.

📄 License

MIT License

👨‍💻 Author

Wallace Ferreira

Senior Full Stack Engineer • Product-minded Engineer • AI-Assisted Development

GitHub:

https://github.com/wallacesw11

⭐ Enjoying the project?

If this theme makes your Delphi development experience better, please consider giving the repository a Star.

It helps the project reach more developers and motivates future improvements.

🎯 Project Goals

This project is more than a color theme.

It is an effort to reproduce the Delphi IDE editing experience using modern editors such as Visual Studio Code and Kiro IDE, while documenting the language highlighting rules through a specification-driven development approach.

The long-term goal is to provide the Delphi community with a high-quality, well-documented and professionally maintained theme.

A familiar Delphi experience in modern editors.