Sakura Nova

A cosmic cherry-blossom theme for Visual Studio Code.

Five hand-tuned variants — four dark, one light — built around a single sakura-pink accent, with full semantic highlighting and a matching terminal palette.

_{Published on the Marketplace as Sakura Nova New — extension ID zsn-Rose.sakura-nova-new.}

Contents

• Install
• Variants
• Preview
• Color palette
• Recommended settings
• Customizing
• Language coverage
• Contributing
• Changelog
• License

Install

From the Marketplace — open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X), search for Sakura Nova New, and hit Install. A few similarly-named sakura themes exist on the Marketplace, so if you want to be certain, the exact extension ID is zsn-Rose.sakura-nova-new.

From Quick Open — press Ctrl+P / Cmd+P, then:

ext install zsn-Rose.sakura-nova-new

From the CLI:

code --install-extension zsn-Rose.sakura-nova-new

Then pick a variant with Ctrl+K Ctrl+T / Cmd+K Cmd+T, or run Preferences: Color Theme from the Command Palette.

Requirements — VS Code 1.77.0 or later. Works out of the box in restricted/untrusted workspaces and virtual workspaces such as vscode.dev and github.dev, since a color theme is just data.

Variants

Preview

Sakura Nova Dark

_{background · keyword · string · cursor}

Sakura Nova Dark Pro

_{background · keyword · string · cursor}

Sakura Nova Warm

_{background · keyword · string · cursor}

Sakura Nova Dark Red

_{background · keyword · string · cursor}

Sakura Nova Light

_{background · keyword · string · cursor}

Color palette

Every variant is built from the same underlying palette — only which UI role gets which color changes. Everything below is read directly from the theme JSON, not eyeballed off a screenshot.

Brand core

The accent is shared across all five variants, so switching between them never changes the feel of the UI chrome.

	Name	Hex	Role
	Sakura	#FF5DA2	Primary accent — focus border, badges, active line number, tab indicator
	Blossom	#FF75C3	Keywords & headings in Pro / Warm
	Rose	#F02E6E	Errors, deleted-file indicator & Warm's buttons
	Nova Green	#2CE592	Added-file indicator & terminal green (four dark variants)
	Comet	#1DA0E2	Modified-file indicator & terminal blue (four dark variants)
	Petal	#FFC0CB	Cursor in Dark, Dark Pro & Warm
	Nova Violet	#AD50EC	Keywords in Dark
	Lavender	#D4BFFF	Numbers, constants, types
	Nova Blue	#91DDFF	Functions
	Aqua	#63F2F1	Attributes
	Mint	#A1EFD3	Strings
	Amber	#FFB378	Terminal yellow; bracket accents in some dark variants
	Honey	#FFE6B3	Warnings, conflicts & bright terminal yellow (four dark variants)
	Dusk	#7F789F	Comments, line numbers, muted UI
	Moonlight	#F8F8F2	Foreground
	Midnight	#100E23	Editor background
	Nebula	#1E1C31	Elevated surfaces, line highlight

Interface

Syntax

Recommended settings

Sakura Nova ships semantic highlighting and bracket-pair colors, so both are worth leaving on. Drop this into your settings.json:

{
  "workbench.colorTheme": "Sakura Nova Dark",

  // Semantic tokens are defined for all five variants
  "editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled": true,

  // Bracket pair colors are theme-defined (3 levels + unexpected)
  "editor.bracketPairColorization.enabled": true,
  "editor.guides.bracketPairs": "active",

  // Pairs well with the theme's italics
  "editor.fontFamily": "'JetBrains Mono', 'Fira Code', 'Cascadia Code', monospace",
  "editor.fontLigatures": true,
  "editor.fontSize": 14,
  "editor.lineHeight": 1.6,

  "editor.cursorBlinking": "phase",
  "editor.cursorSmoothCaretAnimation": "on",
  "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "'JetBrains Mono', monospace"
}

Note on italics — comments are italic in every variant. Dark Red goes further and italicizes variables and properties throughout; Dark Pro and Warm add a subtle italic to semantic parameters only, visible once editor.semanticHighlighting.enabled is on as recommended above. If your font has no true italic, pick one that does (JetBrains Mono, Cascadia Code, Fira Code, Victor Mono) or turn italics off in Customizing below.

Customizing

Scope your overrides to a single variant so they don't leak into other themes.

{
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "[Sakura Nova Dark]": {
      "editor.background": "#0B0A1A",
      "editorCursor.foreground": "#FF5DA2",
      "sideBar.background": "#0B0A1A"
    }
  },

  "editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
    "[Sakura Nova Dark]": {
      // Turn off italic comments
      "comments": { "fontStyle": "" },
      "textMateRules": [
        {
          "scope": "keyword.control",
          "settings": { "foreground": "#FF5DA2" }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

To find the scope under your cursor, run Developer: Inspect Editor Tokens and Scopes from the Command Palette.

Language coverage

Token rules are tuned and visually checked against:

JavaScript · TypeScript · JSX / TSX · HTML · CSS / SCSS · Python · C · C++ · Rust · Go · Java · Ruby · PHP · Swift · Markdown · JSON / JSONC · YAML · TOML · Shell

Anything not in that list still renders correctly through the base scopes and semantic tokens — open an issue if a language looks off and it'll get a dedicated pass.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at shahinso/sakura-nova.

• Formatting follows the repo's .editorconfig — 2-space indents, LF line endings, UTF-8, and a final newline. Markdown files are exempt from trailing-whitespace trimming, since a trailing double-space is a valid Markdown line break.
• Before opening a PR that touches a theme file, run npm run validate. It's the same check the release workflow runs, so a label typo or a missing color fails fast either way.
• New or adjusted token rules should be checked against the languages in Language coverage. If a language you use looks off, open an issue instead of guessing at a scope.
• Screenshots in Preview are taken from the same Extension: Preview Sakura Nova Extension Development Host — keep new ones at a similar window size and zoom level so the set stays consistent.

Changelog

All notable changes are recorded in CHANGELOG.md, which follows Keep a Changelog and Semantic Versioning.

License

MIT © zso