Warm Glass

A warm obsidian VS Code theme with coral, amber, lilac, jade, and cream syntax colors—without turning the whole editor blue.

The extension contains two independent parts:

• Warm Glass Dark color theme works on every platform using the supported VS Code theming API.
• Optional macOS glass mode uses Vibrancy Continued to add real wallpaper-backed transparency, blur, rounded surfaces, and the custom glass CSS.

Preview

macOS Windowed Mode — Live Vibrancy

The desktop remains physically behind the editor, producing live wallpaper-backed transparency and blur.

macOS Native Full Screen — Matched Glass Backdrop

Native full screen moves VS Code into its own macOS Space. Warm Glass preserves the visual depth with a local, wallpaper-matched glass backdrop.

Install

After installing the extension, select Warm Glass Dark from Preferences: Color Theme.

For the complete macOS glass look:

1. Open the Command Palette with Cmd+Shift+P.
2. Run Warm Glass: Apply Recommended Glass Setup.
3. Confirm the warning, approve the administrator prompt if macOS shows one, and click Restart Now.

Installing or selecting the color theme alone does not enable glass. If you dismissed the welcome, click Set Up Glass in the status bar. Refresh repairs the full glass preset if a prior setup was incomplete.

Warm Glass installs Vibrancy Continued for you if it is missing, and restarts VS Code itself when setup finishes.

The command backs up every global setting it changes and creates a fullscreen backdrop from the current local macOS wallpaper. It uses only built-in macOS tools and does not upload the wallpaper.

Glass needs one full restart because Vibrancy patches the desktop process. Restart Now does this for you; closing only the current window is not enough.

If an update removes the patch, a Restore Glass button appears in the status bar. Warm Glass does not repeat refresh popups on every launch. Setup saves its settings together to avoid a separate companion refresh notification for each setting; macOS permissions and Vibrancy's own notices may still appear.

Fullscreen

The live glass comes from a macOS vibrancy layer that blends with the desktop behind the window. Native full screen moves VS Code into its own Space, where the desktop is no longer physically behind the window and live vibrancy cannot sample it.

Warm Glass keeps VS Code's standard window.nativeFullScreen behavior—including the real green traffic-light control—and caches an embedded local wallpaper preview behind the frosted panels. Fullscreen uses a neutral luminosity blend and a dark overlay to keep colorful wallpapers from tinting the editor. The normal window's glass appearance is unchanged.

Run Warm Glass: Refresh Glass After VS Code Update after changing the wallpaper or macOS light/dark appearance. Dynamic Aerial wallpapers are cached as a still frame because macOS does not provide the desktop vibrancy layer inside a native full-screen Space.

If macOS cannot provide a wallpaper preview, windowed glass can still be enabled and restarted. Fullscreen falls back to a dark background; details remain available in Setup Diagnostics without repeated warning popups.

Custom picture selection has been removed. Apply or Refresh disconnects the old Warm Glass picture import and returns to wallpaper-based glass. Previously selected image files are left untouched.

Older Warm Glass releases forced a non-native fullscreen mode. Apply and Refresh remove any remnant of that obsolete window-behavior patch rather than installing it again.

Commands

• Warm Glass: Apply Recommended Glass Setup — selects the theme, configures the glass preset, and enables Vibrancy Continued.
• Warm Glass: Refresh Glass After VS Code Update — refreshes the stable CSS, regenerates the current-wallpaper backdrop, removes obsolete legacy window patches, and reapplies Vibrancy.
• Warm Glass: Restore Previous Settings — restores the saved global settings, removes any obsolete legacy fullscreen patch, and optionally disables Vibrancy.
• Warm Glass: Disable Fullscreen Patch — recovery command that removes window-behavior patches left by Warm Glass releases before 1.1.
• Warm Glass: Run Setup Diagnostics — checks the companion version and activation, theme compatibility, stable CSS, fullscreen backdrop, application patch, macOS accessibility setting, and common installation problems without exposing personal paths.

Glass not appearing?

1. Run Warm Glass: Run Setup Diagnostics from the Command Palette.
2. Run Warm Glass: Apply Recommended Glass Setup again — it installs or updates Vibrancy Continued (1.1.93 or newer) automatically.
3. Approve the administrator prompt if macOS shows one.
4. Quit every VS Code window completely with Cmd+Q, then reopen VS Code.
5. On macOS, make sure System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Reduce transparency is turned off.
6. Keep Visual Studio Code.app inside /Applications; an App Translocation or read-only installation cannot be patched normally.
7. If only native full screen looks flat, run Warm Glass: Refresh Glass After VS Code Update to rebuild the cached backdrop.

Glass setup is available only in desktop VS Code on macOS. The color theme remains usable elsewhere. Browser-based VS Code cannot provide native window glass.

Important note about glass mode

VS Code's supported color-theme API can define transparent colors, but it cannot make the native application window transparent. The optional glass mode therefore relies on Vibrancy Continued, which patches VS Code application files. VS Code may display an integrity warning, and Vibrancy may need refreshing after an editor update. Warm Glass does not patch fullscreen behavior; it removes the obsolete patch used by releases before 1.1. The regular Warm Glass color theme does not patch VS Code.

Build locally

npm install
npm run package

This creates an installable .vsix file.

Privacy

The Warm Glass extension runtime includes no telemetry, analytics, accounts, or network requests. Wallpaper discovery and backdrop generation stay on the Mac and use local system metadata plus built-in Quick Look. The Marketplace README itself loads its two preview images from Cloudinary.

License

MIT