Syntalume — Adaptive Themes & Icons

One comfortable, recognizable appearance across editors, projects, terminals, and teams.

Nine contrast-audited themes, matching file and product icons, Tune 2 comfort controls,
and local-first project awareness for VS Code-compatible editors and JetBrains IDEs.

Website · Quick start · Documentation · Support

Syntalume is the new name for Auralis — same product, same themes, same update path.

Installing does not apply a theme or profile. Local features are explicit and ownership-aware;
Syntalume: Reset Syntalume Settings restores unchanged Syntalume writes while later manual edits win.

Quick Start

1. Select Set Color Theme above and choose a Syntalume variant.
2. Select Set File Icon Theme and Set Product Icon Theme to enable matching icons.
3. Open the Command Palette and run Syntalume: Open Syntalume Tune to adjust comfort, or Syntalume: Open Icon Studio to customize icons.

To review your setup, run Syntalume: Open Setup Dashboard. To restore settings Syntalume applied, run Syntalume: Reset Syntalume Settings; later manual edits are preserved.

30 days free, then an annual subscription. New users and existing Auralis/Syntalume users receive 30 full days from the first presentation of the in-editor notice. No account or payment details are needed for that period. Plans are $9/year for 1 activation, $12/year for 3, or $20/year for 6, plus applicable tax. Checkout charges immediately and renews yearly until canceled; it does not add another trial. The same subscription applies to VS Code-compatible editors, Open VSX and JetBrains. Pricing and activation details · 30-day first-purchase refunds.

Paid licenses require online activation and periodic verification with Polar after your consent. Temporary connection or service failures retain previously verified access for up to 72 hours, bounded by the known license expiry. If that grace ends while verification is unavailable, interactive and background features pause but the selected appearance is retained. Confirmed expiration or revocation stops licensed features. If a selected Syntalume appearance must fall back to editor defaults, it is saved for safe restoration when access returns; later manual appearance changes are preserved. Source files are not changed. License management and recovery remain available. An activation is an editor installation, not necessarily a physical computer; Theme and Companion share one activation in the same JetBrains IDE. Browser-only extension hosts such as vscode.dev/github.dev are not supported by this paid release. Desktop and server-based Node extension hosts use coordinated local storage.

Native remote hosts connected to the same VS Code UI installation share the local 30-day period; existing host-specific periods use the earliest known dates. Paid activation slots remain separate per installation. This is not a universal account-level trial across different machines or editor products.

Make the Editor Fit the Work

Syntalume is designed around five jobs, not a wall of settings:

• Choose a look — move between nine stable variants without relearning the visual meaning of syntax, diagnostics, source control, tests, or diffs.
• Tune comfort — Tune 2 adds typography, variable emphasis, surface, border, bracket, and density controls to the existing perceptual color engine.
• Keep the system consistent — desktop Icon Studio applies exact visual controls and file, folder, root, and language associations through one safe, extension-owned Explorer theme, alongside four generated icon presets. Terminal export carries the palette into six terminal environments.
• Know where you are — one restrained Syntalume status entry can identify project and production context from local, read-only signals.
• Review and restore safely — Accessibility Lab, Review Sessions, copied diagnostics, shared profiles, and exact reset stay user-initiated.

Shared .auralis/profile.json files (the new .syntalume/profile.json path is read too) use a versioned, editor-neutral schema, so teams can recommend the same variant, comfort, style, and guard rules in VS Code and the optional Syntalume Companion for JetBrains. Applying a repository profile always requires consent.

Proof, Not Promises

• 9 contrast-audited variants, including true high-contrast and options designed to reduce reliance on red/green distinctions. Color-vision simulations are heuristics, not a guarantee for every reader.
• 200+ automated checks, visual baselines, package audits, and activation, memory, and bundle-size budgets.
• No passive telemetry. The 30-day editor period needs no account or network request; paid use requires disclosed Polar activation and validation.
• Small, lazy runtime: themes and icons are declarative; commands and optional local tools activate after VS Code startup and carry automated performance budgets.
• Native desktop and supported remote hosts, with Open VSX/fork QA and stable color keys for GitLens, Error Lens, and GitHub Pull Requests where those extensions expose them.
• Exact reset for Syntalume-owned settings, with newer manual choices left alone.

The Variants

Every theme below is generated from one OKLch color engine and audited for WCAG contrast on every release — the same code sample, the same terminal, nine different moods. Click any card for the full-resolution view.

Noir Cinematic dark. Jewel-tone syntax.	Frost Glass and neon. Cold and luminous.
Paper Warm light for daylight work.	Botanica A quiet forest at dusk. Organic, alive.
Void True-black OLED. Pixels off, colors on.	Dimmed Lower glare for late-night work.
Noir High Contrast True hc-black for review and debugging.	Paper High Contrast True hc-light for daylight and projectors.
Frost Colorblind Status on a blue/orange axis, not red/green.

Icons That Match

Nearly 400 file icons — with hand-drawn glyphs for Docker, Python, React, Kubernetes, git, Rust, and more — plus a bespoke product icon font that restyles VS Code's own workbench glyphs. Both follow the active theme.

Icon samples are enlarged vector specimens from the shipped sets. Colors follow your theme and settings.

Built In, Not Bolted On

Editor features run locally with no passive telemetry and a small runtime that loads lazily after startup. Paid activation and periodic license checks require Polar; workspace contents are never sent for licensing. Themes and icons remain native, declarative VS Code contributions.

• Syntalume Tune 2 — warmth, contrast, saturation, and accent controls plus advanced typography, variable emphasis, workbench surface, border, bracket, and density choices. WCAG floors are re-enforced live. Guide →
• Icon Studio — search the shipped inventory; apply exact saturation, opacity, file, folder, project-root, and language associations on desktop; and carry portable presets between supported native editor installations. Guide →
• Accessibility Lab — inspect active-theme contrast and diagnostic, git, test, diff, bracket, and terminal status separation under approximate CVD simulations; preview and exactly apply two reviewed status axes; copy or save the audit. Guide →
• Export Terminal Theme — one command carries your palette to iTerm2, Windows Terminal, Alacritty, WezTerm, Ghostty, or Warp. Guide →
• Environment Guard — the workbench warns you when kubectl, Terraform, or git points at production, using one status entry, repo-specific literal labels, and an optional one-time alert. Guide →
• Rhythm — themes that follow your day: Paper at noon, Noir at midnight. Guide →
• Shared profiles — commit a versioned .auralis/profile.json and your team can adopt the same tuned environment in VS Code and JetBrains, always by consent. Guide →
• Review Sessions — snapshot your setup, review in high contrast, restore exactly, see what you touched. Guide →

The JetBrains Marketplace carries the standalone, near-zero-runtime Syntalume Theme with the same nine palettes, editor schemes, icon substitutions, and Islands-aware surfaces. Behavioral features live in the separate optional Companion rather than adding runtime weight to the theme bundle.

Other Editors and Sharing

Open VSX · JetBrains Marketplace

Like your setup? Share syntalume.dev, or add a badge using the copyable example.

Need Support?

Bugs, questions, and requests live on the Syntalume support hub. Offline documentation ships inside the extension — run Syntalume: Open Documentation.

When you choose to share something, Syntalume can copy sanitized diagnostics, prefill a visual bug, icon, or language-coverage request, or open the review page for the registry you installed from. Nothing is submitted automatically and Syntalume never shows recurring feedback prompts.

A short, honest review tells other developers what to expect and tells us what to fix next — before anything about the product changes shape:

• Review on the VS Code Marketplace
• Review on Open VSX (VSCodium, code-server, Gitpod, and other forks)
• Review on JetBrains Marketplace

If something is broken, an issue on the support hub reaches us fastest — Syntalume: Report a Visual Theme Bug prefills one for you.

About the Name

Syntalume joins syntax — the shape of the code in front of you — with lume: light. Pronounced SIN-tuh-loom. Every Syntalume theme is built on that idea: light shaped for reading code, tuned to stay beautiful for as long as you're working. Code in better light.

Syntalume — Code in better light.
Operated by Mbanwi Ventures LLC, doing business as Syntalume.
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