Themes

A theme sets Sona’s colours. Twelve come with Sona, and you can add your own as a JSON file.

Choose a theme

1. Open Settings → Appearance.
2. Pick a theme in the gallery.

The light, dark or system mode setting still decides which variant a theme shows. A theme with one variant stays in that look, and Settings → Appearance tells you so.

Built-in themes

Id	Name	Looks	Spot colour
sona	Sona	Sona’s own board, light and dark (the default)	amber
graphite	Graphite	A cooler neutral board, light and dark	sky blue
paper	Paper	A warm neutral board, grey and not cream, light and dark	teal
contrast	High contrast	Strong lines, every text colour at 7:1, light and dark	blue (light), yellow (dark)
oled	OLED	True black #000000 ground, dark only	blue
catppuccin	Catppuccin	Latte (light) and Mocha (dark)	peach
nord	Nord	Snow Storm (light) and Polar Night (dark)	frost
gruvbox	Gruvbox	Light and dark	yellow
solarized	Solarized	Light and dark	yellow
dracula	Dracula	Dark only	pink
rose-pine	Rosé Pine	Dawn (light) and the main palette (dark)	gold
tokyo-night	Tokyo Night	Day (light) and Night (dark)	orange

Sona’s five own themes use a neutral board, so album covers show true colour. The others map each project’s palette onto Sona’s colours and credit the project in author. Where an exact value fails the contrast rules, one colour is adjusted in lightness only.

Change the accent

Sona, Graphite, Paper, High contrast and OLED have an Accent row in Settings → Appearance: amber, gold, lime, sky, teal or rose. “Theme default” keeps the theme’s own colour. The accent marks what is playing. Sona doesn’t offer an accent that fails the contrast rules in either variant.

Add your own theme

1. Open Settings → Appearance → “Open themes folder”. Sona creates the folder if it is missing.
2. Copy a theme from internal/ui/theme/themes/ into it and give it a new id.
3. Change the colours, starting with the board, then the accent colour (amber).
4. Save. The theme appears in the gallery, and every later save shows at once, with no restart.

You write only the colours that change; Sona supplies the rest. The theme file format lists every colour and rule.

If a theme breaks a rule, Sona doesn’t load it. It stays in the gallery as a disabled card that lists what failed, and a theme that worked before keeps its last good version. Fix the file and save.

The themes folder is:

System	Folder
Linux	~/.config/sona/themes (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/sona/themes)
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Sona/themes
Windows	%AppData%\Sona\themes

Sona reads at most 100 files of up to 256 KiB each. Your settings export includes the chosen theme but not the files, so copy those yourself.

Tips

• Keep hover and active a step apart. Text must stay readable on both.
• Check the accent colour in the light and dark variants. A colour that works on a dark board often fails the 3:1 floor on a light one. For light themes, make amber-ink darker than amber; in dark themes they are usually equal.
• Sona stores the theme’s id in your settings. If the file is deleted or refused when Sona starts, Sona shows its own theme and says so in Settings. The choice comes back with the file.