Leuven-theme

Searching for an outstanding Emacs color theme? Want one of the best light themes for Org mode and other modes? You’ve come to the right place!

Welcome to the custom Leuven theme – an elegant and widely loved color theme designed for light backgrounds. It features built-in styles for various components, including Org mode, Gnus, Dired+, and EDiff. Make it yours!

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Screenshots

Org buffer (with code)

Fontified source code blocks:

Note that, to get the whole heading lines fontified, you need to add the following line into your .emacs file:

;; Fontify the whole line for headings (with a background color).
(setq org-fontify-whole-heading-line t)

Agenda

Agenda with task list:

Quotations

“Your Org-enhancing color-theme “leuven” ROCKS! … and not just for Org.”
– Johan S.

“Amazing theme. I’ve been switching themes like socks the past 3 years and finally found a theme that fits me exactly.”
– zeltak

“The Leuven theme has quickly become my favorite – the colors are great and the visual details for Org mode are just wonderful.”
– Steve B.

“I’m using leuven theme, which is a great theme for Org-mode. […] I cannot use another emacs-theme.”
– Joseph Vidal-Rosset

“Leuven theme is awesome!”
– Joost Diepenmaat

“I still am really enjoying using the theme – wish I’d had it years back…”
– V.

“I’ve been using leuven-theme, which is a fantastic theme for Org-mode files.”
– thnetos

“I love leuven for it’s magit faces. E.g. the different sections of the magit status screen stand out much better with leuven than with any other theme I’ve tried. It’s a good looking theme but what makes it stand out is the attention the author has put into all of the different faces you find everywhere.”
– UnwashedMeme

NEW! Dark version

There is now a dark version of Leuven-theme, automagically built by Thibault Polge.

It surely will be improved over time, but this is a major first step into the right direction. A big thanks to him!

Install it

Though Leuven-theme has been added in Emacs 24.4 (October 2014), you can get a fresh version of it, at any time, from MELPA or from GitHub.

Install the ELPA package

In Emacs 24+, M-x list-packages is the recommended way to list and install packages.

MELPA keeps stable releases of Leuven theme.

See http://melpa.milkbox.net/#installing for more information on how to install leuven-theme:

1. Just add MELPA to package-archives,

   ;; Archives from which to fetch.
   (setq package-archives
         (append '(("melpa" . "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/"))
                 package-archives))
       

2. Call list-packages,
3. Search for leuven-theme,
4. Mark it for installation with i, and
5. Execute the install action with x.

Install the Git version

Get the full Git repository at https://github.com/fniessen/emacs-leuven-theme using the following command:

git clone https://github.com/fniessen/emacs-leuven-theme

Add the following in your .emacs file:

(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path "/PATH/TO/EMACS-LEUVEN-THEME/lisp")
(load-theme 'leuven t)                  ; For Emacs 24+.

Restart Emacs.

Dark-theme

To load the dark theme, add the following to your .emacs file:

(load-theme 'leuven-dark t)

To use the dark theme with use-package, use the following:

(use-package leuven-theme
  :config
  (load-theme 'leuven-dark t))

Restart Emacs.

Customize it

You don’t like my large Org level-1 headings or my large Org agenda-date heading (though I made them larger on purpose!)?

Then, set the variable leuven-scale-outline-headlines to nil before the theme is loaded.

(setq leuven-scale-outline-headlines nil)
;; For dark theme:
(setq leuven-dark-scale-outline-headlines nil)

Other settings you might want to consider:

(setq leuven-scale-org-agenda-structure nil)
(setq leuven-scale-org-document-title nil)
(setq leuven-scale-volatile-highlight nil)
;; For dark theme:
(setq leuven-dark-scale-org-agenda-structure nil)
(setq leuven-dark-scale-org-document-title nil)
(setq leuven-dark-scale-volatile-highlight nil)

The value can be:

• nil for unscaled,
• t for using the theme default, or
• a scaling number (that you choose to your liking!).

One way to do that is to it through M-x customize-variable and then restart Emacs.

Contributing

Issues

Report issues and suggest features and improvements on the GitHub issue tracker.

Patches

I love contributions! Patches under any form are always welcome!

Donations

If you use the emacs-leuven-theme project and feel it is making your life better and easier, you can show your appreciation and help support future development by making a donation through PayPal. Thank you!

Regardless of the donations, emacs-leuven-theme will always be free both as in beer and as in speech.

License

Emacs-Leuven-Theme
Copyright (C) 2003-2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.