Theme Carousel

A Visual Studio Code extension that automatically switches your color theme on a configurable schedule. Never get bored of looking at the same theme again.

Features

Automatic Theme Switching

Theme Carousel randomly selects from all installed color themes and applies them on a schedule. It maintains a history of recently used themes (half of your total installed themes) to ensure variety — you won't see the same theme twice until the carousel has worked through the pool.

Two Scheduling Modes

Daily Mode (default)

• Switches your theme every N days (configurable, default: 1 day).
• Persists across VS Code restarts — won't re-trigger until the interval has actually elapsed.

Timed Mode

• Switches your theme 3 times a day: morning, afternoon, and evening.
• Each time slot's hour is independently configurable (defaults: 8:00, 13:00, 18:00).
• Each slot fires exactly once per calendar day — restarting VS Code mid-slot won't trigger a duplicate switch.

Status Bar Integration

The current theme name is displayed in the status bar (bottom-right). Click it to open the settings panel. The status bar icon can be hidden via settings.

When the status bar is visible, theme switch notifications are suppressed — the status bar itself serves as the indicator. When hidden, standard VS Code notifications appear instead.

Marketplace Theme Recommendations

Periodically discovers trending themes from the VS Code Marketplace that you don't already have installed, and suggests them via a notification with a one-click install action. Configurable interval (default: every 7 days). Can be disabled entirely.

Dedicated Settings Panel

A built-in visual settings page — no need to dig through JSON. Open it via:

• Clicking the status bar item
• Command Palette: Theme Carousel: Open Settings

The panel shows all options organized into sections (Schedule, Daily, Timed, Recommendations, Appearance, Actions) with live two-way sync — changes made in the panel write immediately, and external setting changes update the panel in real time.

Commands

Settings

All settings are under the vsccc.* namespace.

Architecture

src/
├── extension.ts        Entry point, command registration, status bar
├── themeService.ts     Theme enumeration, random selection with history, apply
├── scheduler.ts        60-second interval checks for daily/timed/recommendation triggers
├── marketplace.ts      VS Code Marketplace API queries, recommendation notifications
└── settingsPanel.ts    Webview-based settings UI with bidirectional config sync

How It Works

1. Activation: The extension activates via onStartupFinished to ensure all theme-contributing extensions are loaded first.
2. Theme enumeration: Iterates vscode.extensions.all and collects contributes.themes[].label from each extension's package manifest.
3. Random selection with variety: Maintains a FIFO history in globalState sized to half the total theme count. Candidates are filtered against this history, guaranteeing you cycle through at least half your themes before any repeat.
4. Theme application: Writes to workbench.colorTheme via vscode.workspace.getConfiguration().update() with ConfigurationTarget.Global.
5. Scheduling: A lightweight 60-second setInterval polls whether a switch is due based on timestamps and slot keys persisted in globalState.
6. Marketplace integration: POSTs to the public VS Code Gallery API (extensionquery), filters out already-installed extensions, and presents a random pick.

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Compile
npm run compile

# Watch mode
npm run watch

To test locally, press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host with the extension loaded.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85.0 or later
• At least 2 installed color themes (for switching to be meaningful)

License

MIT