Eke Dark
A two-tone chrome color theme with teal accents and fully-colored syntax. (Also includes light variants.)
Why another theme?
Eke Dark exists for two reasons:
1. Consistency across IDEs. I usually switch between VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, and just needed something consistent across both IDEs. Eke Dark is being built as a single visual language across both — VS Code first, JetBrains version in progress.
2. The default JetBrains syntax highlighting leaves too many tokens uncolored. Local variables, parameters, simple identifiers, and many properties render at the default foreground color — effectively white in dark themes, black in light themes. The result is large blocks of code where only keywords, strings, and a handful of other tokens carry color, and everything else blurs together. Eke Dark colors those tokens distinctly so the structure of code is visible at a glance.
The chrome takes visual cues from JetBrains' Islands theme — the two-tone separation between editor and surrounding panels, the calm restrained palette. The syntax scheme is built from scratch around the principle that every meaningful token should have a color.
Variants
Eke Dark ships in Dark and Light variants, each with an optional Italic version that styles comments and parameters in italic. The non-italic versions are the default. (They work with any monospace font with italic glyphs see Recommended Setup).
Features
- Two-tone UI chrome — sidebar/panel darker than editor, activity bar/status bar darkest.
- Teal accent (
#4ECDC4) — cursor, active tab underline, focus borders, buttons, badges, links.
- Fully-colored syntax — no token left at the foreground color. Variables, parameters, properties, and identifiers each get their own hue.
- Semantic highlighting — LSP-driven token colors with full
semanticTokenColors support.
- Bracket pair colorization — gold, magenta, blue cycling.
- Comprehensive language support — TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Rust, PHP, CSS/SCSS, JSON, YAML, Markdown, and more.
Syntax Palette (Dark)
| Element |
Color |
Hex |
| Keyword / Storage |
 |
#E5A070 |
| Functions / Methods |
 |
#6BBAFF |
| String |
 |
#7FCC85 |
| Number |
 |
#3CC8D4 |
| Class / Type / Variable |
 |
#42D4BA |
| Property access |
 |
#79E3D2 |
| Constant / Key / Attribute |
 |
#D2A8FF |
| Comment |
 |
#7a7e85 |
| Decorator |
 |
#CCC76E |
| RegExp |
 |
#58D8E8 |
| Tag (HTML) |
 |
#6BB0EA |
Property access is a lighter tint of the variable color rather than a separate hue, so a chain
like user.profile.name stays one visual family while each link still reads as distinct. Where a
property is being declared — an object literal key, a JSON key, an enum member — it takes the
constant purple instead.
Installation
From the Marketplace
- Open the Extensions sidebar in VS Code (
Cmd+Shift+X on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+X on Windows/Linux)
- Search for
Eke
- Click Install
- Open the Command Palette (
Cmd+Shift+P on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux) → Preferences: Color Theme and pick one of the four Eke variants
Manual install
- Download the latest
.vsix from the Releases page
- Install it via the command line:
code --install-extension eke-dark-1.0.0.vsix
Or in VS Code: open the Extensions sidebar → ... menu → Install from VSIX 3. Open the Command Palette → Preferences: Color Theme and pick an Eke variant
- Restart VS Code.
- Open the Command Palette → Preferences: Color Theme and pick an Eke variant.
Recommended Setup
Eke Dark is tuned against specific typography. You don't need to match it, but the colors are calibrated for these fonts:
Suggested settings.json
{
"editor.fontFamily": "Google Sans Code, Menlo, 'Courier New', monospace",
"editor.fontSize": 13,
"editor.fontLigatures": true,
"editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": true,
"editor.codeLensFontFamily": "Google Sans Code, Menlo, 'Courier New', monospace",
"terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "Agave Nerd Font Mono, Menlo, 'Courier New', monospace",
"terminal.integrated.fontSize": 13,
"markdown.preview.fontFamily": "Google Sans Code, Menlo, 'Courier New', monospace",
}
Contributing
Contributions are welcome. Color fixes, additional language scopes, and chrome polish especially. The theme is plain JSON with no build step, so getting it running locally takes about a minute:
- Fork and clone the repository, then open it in VS Code:
git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/eke-dark.git
cd eke-dark
code .
Open the repository folder itself as the workspace root, or the next step won't find the debug configuration.
- Press F5 (or Run → Start Debugging) to launch an Extension Development Host — a second VS Code window with the theme loaded. This uses the checked-in
.vscode/launch.json; see CONTRIBUTING.md if F5 doesn't start it.
- In that window, open the Command Palette → Preferences: Color Theme and pick an Eke variant.
- Edit any file in themes/ and save. Changes apply live in the host window; run Developer: Reload Window there if one doesn't show up.
To find the scope behind a given token, run Developer: Inspect Editor Tokens and Scopes in the host window and click the token.
Remember that the four variants (eke-dark, eke-dark-italic, eke-light, eke-light-italic) need to stay in sync, and that most tokens need entries in both tokenColors and semanticTokenColors.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guidelines, palette rules, and pull request checklist.
Credits
- Islands theme by JetBrains — chrome inspiration: two-tone separation, calm palette, the overall "softer, lighter" approach to UI.
- Yo Code by Microsoft — the Yeoman generator used to scaffold this extension.
- Google Sans Code — recommended editor font.
- Agave by Blob — base font for the recommended terminal setup.
- Nerd Fonts — the patching project that produces Agave Nerd Font Mono with icon glyphs.
