Note for Windows and macOS users:
In IDEA versions >= 2020.3 the functionality of this plugin already exists out of the box.
Auto Dark Mode IDEA Plugin
Plugin that automatically switches the IDEA theme based on
operating system settings. The plugin distinguishes between Light, Dark and High Contrast mode and
the theme used for each mode can be customized.
This plugin currently works for Windows and macOS.
Linux support is both limited and experimental. At the moment, Linux desktop environments that have an XSettings daemon running are supported.
Gtk based desktop environments such as Gnome and Xfce ship with such a daemon out of the box. Users of minimalist window managers (such as i3) can choose to run a daemon shipped with Gnome (gsd-xsettings) or Xfce (xfsettingsd), among many choices.
By default, the following themes are used:
| Mode | Theme |
|---|---|
| Light | IntelliJ |
| Dark | Darcula |
| High Contrast | High Contrast |
Building
./gradlew build
./gradlew buildPlugin
Architecture support
| Operating System | x86 Support | x86_64 Support | arm64 Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | |||
| macOS | |||
| Linux |
OS-dependent build components
When Gradle builds the plugin, it will only be able to compile native components for the operating system running the build. For example, macOS toolchains won't be available to someone who is compiling on Windows. For this reason, this plugin depends on artifacts built by a custom GitHub Actions workflow for the platforms which cannot be compiled in the given environment. A custom Gradle plugin downloads these artifacts during the build if necessary.
This step requires a GitHub access token
For Gradle to be able to retrieve the pre-built artifacts, you need to provide a personal access token using the githubAccessToken property in gradle.properties file. The access token only needs to have the permission to read repositories. Be sure to not commit your token.
Requirements for building
With exception to Linux, this plugin only requires that a standard C++ toolchain be installed when building on Windows (i.e. VisualCpp) and an Objective-C++ toolchain when building on macOS (i.e. Gcc or Clang).
At the moment, Linux requires a standard C++ toolchain like Gcc as well as the following packages.
libsigc++-2.0-dev libglibmm-2.4-dev libgtk-3-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev
Running
You can use the standard runIde task to run this plugin
in a sandbox IDE. If you encounter errors like "Directory '[project-folder]/auto-dark-mode/base/build/idea-sandbox/plugins' specified for property 'pluginsDirectory' does not exist.", you might want
to try running the task :auto-dark-mode-plugin:runIde instead.
If you experience other issues, you can try a clean environment by running the following command.
./gradlew clean build :auto-dark-mode-plugin:runIde