Lumina – Theme Toggle
Automatically switch between a light and a dark color theme — by sunrise/sunset, your operating system's appearance, a custom schedule, or on demand. Works in VS Code and VS Code–based editors (Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium).
Requirements
- VS Code 1.74 or later (or a compatible fork: Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium).
- At least one light theme and one dark theme installed (the built-in Default Light/Dark Modern work out of the box).
Installation
VS Code — install from the Visual Studio Marketplace: open the Extensions view (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+X), search Theme Toggle, and click Install.
Cursor / Windsurf / VSCodium — these forks use Open VSX; search Theme Toggle in the Extensions view, or install the .vsix directly.
From a .vsix file (any editor):
code --install-extension theme-toggle-<version>.vsix # VS Code
cursor --install-extension theme-toggle-<version>.vsix # Cursor
Quick start
- Pick your themes. Open the Command Palette (
Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P) and run Theme Toggle: Select Light Theme, then Theme Toggle: Select Dark Theme — choose from any installed theme.
- Toggle. Click the ☀️ / 🌙 item in the status bar (bottom-right), or run Theme Toggle: Toggle Light/Dark Now.
- Go automatic (optional). Run Theme Toggle: Select Switching Mode and choose System Preference, Sunrise / Sunset, or Manual Schedule.
That's it — out of the box the mode is Manual Toggle, so the extension never changes your settings until you ask it to.
Switching modes
Choose one via Theme Toggle: Select Switching Mode:
- Manual Toggle — switches only when you click the status bar item or run the toggle command.
- System Preference — follows your OS light/dark appearance (delegates to VS Code's built-in
window.autoDetectColorScheme).
- Sunrise / Sunset — light during the day, dark at night, from your local sunrise/sunset times.
- Manual Schedule — switches at times you choose. Selecting this mode prompts you for the light and dark times inline (e.g. light at 07:00, dark at 19:00); you can also edit them later in Settings.
Toggle automatic switching on/off at any time with Theme Toggle: Enable/Disable Automatic Switching, or show a toast on each automatic change via themeToggle.showNotifications.
Commands
| Command |
Description |
Theme Toggle: Toggle Light/Dark Now |
Flip between your light and dark themes immediately. |
Theme Toggle: Select Switching Mode |
Choose how the theme is decided. |
Theme Toggle: Select Light Theme |
Pick the theme used for light mode. |
Theme Toggle: Select Dark Theme |
Pick the theme used for dark mode. |
Theme Toggle: Enable/Disable Automatic Switching |
Master switch for automatic modes. |
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
themeToggle.lightTheme |
Default Light Modern |
Theme for light mode. |
themeToggle.darkTheme |
Default Dark Modern |
Theme for dark mode. |
themeToggle.mode |
manualToggle |
Active switching mode. |
themeToggle.enabled |
true |
Master switch for automatic switching. |
themeToggle.showNotifications |
false |
Notify on automatic theme change. |
themeToggle.latitude |
null |
Latitude for sunrise/sunset (auto-detected via IP if empty). |
themeToggle.longitude |
null |
Longitude for sunrise/sunset (auto-detected via IP if empty). |
themeToggle.schedule.lightTime |
07:00 |
Time to switch to light (Manual Schedule). 24-hour HH:MM. |
themeToggle.schedule.darkTime |
19:00 |
Time to switch to dark (Manual Schedule). 24-hour HH:MM. |
Sunrise / sunset & privacy
Sunrise and sunset times are computed locally on your machine with suncalc — they need only your latitude/longitude and the date, and make no network calls.
To get your coordinates, the extension uses, in order:
themeToggle.latitude / themeToggle.longitude, if you set them — fully offline, nothing leaves your machine.- Otherwise, a one-time IP-based geolocation lookup to
ipapi.co, cached for the rest of the day. This sends your IP address to that service. To avoid it entirely, set your coordinates manually.
No telemetry or analytics are collected.
Troubleshooting
- The theme isn't switching automatically. Make sure automatic switching is on (
themeToggle.enabled) and you're not in Manual Toggle mode. In System Preference mode, switching is driven by your OS appearance setting via VS Code's window.autoDetectColorScheme.
- Sunrise / Sunset does nothing. It needs a location. Set
themeToggle.latitude / themeToggle.longitude, or ensure the one-time IP lookup can reach the network.
- My manual theme keeps getting overridden. An automatic mode is active and re-applying its theme. Switch to Manual Toggle or disable automatic switching.
- See what happened. Open the Output panel (
Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+U) and select "Theme Toggle" from the dropdown — it logs every theme change and mode switch.
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
