Ember Black
An OLED-first VS Code theme built on true black with warm, Claude-inspired accents.
Three themes
| Theme |
Canvas |
For |
| Ember Black |
#000000 |
OLED panels, where true black means the pixel is off |
| Ember Ink |
#151616 |
Long sessions, where true black is a little too stark |
| Ember Slate |
#1c1d1e |
LCD/IPS panels and bright rooms |
All three share one syntax palette — the saturated token colors are
byte-for-byte identical across them. Ink and Slate differ from Black in exactly
two ways: how far off black the canvas sits, and a cool blue-grey cast on the
greys. Both keep Ember Black's own contrast ratios rather than eyeballed ones,
so a lifted canvas costs no crispness.
Ember Black
Ember Ink
Ember Slate
Design
- True-black editor (
#000000) — designed for OLED displays
- Warm accent —
#d97757 orange on focus borders, buttons, cursor, text links, active tab top border, and function parentheses
- Saturated syntax palette — a distinct mid-tone hue per token category (purple keywords, blue tags, terracotta strings, gold functions, sky variables, green numbers, teal types) for fast visual sorting
- Layered chrome — Ember Black lifts its sidebar, status bar, tabs, and title bar above the editor with near-black greys (
#0a0a0a, #0d0d0d). Ink and Slate drop the same chrome below the editor instead, so the eye settles on the code rather than on a frame around it
Install
- Download the latest
ember-black-<version>.vsix from Releases
- In VS Code, open the Extensions view
- Click the
⋯ menu in the top-right → Install from VSIX...
- Select the downloaded file
- Open the command palette (
Ctrl+Shift+P) → Preferences: Color Theme → pick Ember Black, Ember Ink, or Ember Slate
Recommended setting
Add this to your settings.json so the custom bracket colors apply:
"editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": false
Development
Ember Black is the source of truth. Ink and Slate are generated from it:
npm run build
Edit themes/ember-black-color-theme.json, re-run the build, and commit all
three theme files. Never hand-edit themes/ember-ink-color-theme.json or
themes/ember-slate-color-theme.json — they are overwritten.
Each variant is two numbers in tools/build-variants.mjs: a canvas level and a
channel tint. Everything else is derived — every grey is re-found on the new
canvas at the same contrast ratio it held against black, and the dim tokens are
scaled in linear-light space so they keep their calibrated dimness.
icon.png is artwork, not a build output. Nothing in the build touches it.
License
MIT
