Darker

A fork of VS Code's built-in Dark (2026) theme, taken to true #000000 backgrounds with a handful of values tuned to taste. Same accent, same syntax palette, same layout — just black.

Install

Search for Darker in the Extensions view, then select it from Preferences: Color Theme (⌘K ⌘T).

What changed vs. Dark (2026)

A few deliberate tweaks on top:

• Find matches get an amber border, borrowed from Pitch Black, so they don't vanish on black.
• Depth comes from shadows instead of borders, since there are no borders left to carry it.
• Near-white text is lifted slightly (~0.05 Oklab lightness) so it doesn't read as grey against true black.
• Bracket pair colors are neutral instead of VS Code's default rainbow.
• A couple of upstream contrast bugs are fixed (a navy header scope, a white-on-salmon error badge) — found with npm run contrast.

Syntax colors are otherwise Dark (2026)'s, give or take the header fix, the near-white lift, and whatever offsets src/tuning.json carries.

Recommended settings

{ "window.titleBarStyle": "custom" }

The title bar only goes black with VS Code's custom title bar enabled.

Development

Three inputs; nothing else is hand-edited:

npm install
npm run build      # regenerate themes/darker-color-theme.json
npm run sync       # re-vendor Dark (2026) from your local VS Code install
npm run contrast   # WCAG audit; exits 1 on failures, add --all for every color

npm run build alone changes nothing visible. VS Code reads its own copy of the extension under ~/.vscode/extensions/, not this repo — run npm run install-local, then Developer: Reload Window, to actually see a change.

VS Code profiles keep separate extension sets. Working in a named profile requires npm run install-local -- --profile <name>; skip it and the theme silently never appears in that profile's picker, with no error.

src/base.json is frozen — npm run lum -- --reset always restores the vendored originals exactly, no matter how much tuning has been layered on.

Syntax palette

syntaxPalette in src/tuning.json defaults to "mixed", which renders exactly what Dark (2026) does. "2026" uses only 2026's own rules for one consistent palette, but reads noticeably more red — tried, and dropped in favor of "mixed".

Tuning

npm run lum -- --by 0.04             # syntax colors lighter
npm run lum -- --by -0.03            # syntax colors darker
npm run lum -- --by 0.04 --scope fg  # workbench text too
npm run lum -- --by 0.02 --scope bg  # chrome and surfaces
npm run lum -- --show                # print current offsets
npm run lum -- --reset               # back to the vendored originals

Screenshots

screenshots/ is excluded from the packaged .vsix (see .vscodeignore), so this README embeds the preview with a full raw.githubusercontent.com URL — a relative path wouldn't render on the Marketplace page.

Publishing

npx vsce login ${USERNAME}   # needs an Azure DevOps PAT with Marketplace scope
npm run publish

Credits

• Dark (2026) by Microsoft (MIT).
• Pitch Black by Viktor Qvarfordt (MIT), for inspiration and the find-match treatment.

License

MIT