Terminal Color Schemes

The terminal color schemes Daintree ships, how a scheme is chosen independently of the app theme, and how the ANSI palette maps onto what your shell and agents render.

Reviewed Aug 18, 2026

Terminal Color Schemes

Terminal color schemes control the ANSI palette inside terminal panels: foreground, background, and the 16 ANSI slots that programs use for syntax highlighting, status output and prompts. They are configured separately from the app theme, under Settings → Appearance → Terminal, alongside terminal font size and family.

The picker is a two-column scrollable grid. Each card renders a mini terminal mockup in the scheme's own colors, showing sample output, so you can judge it in context rather than from swatches. A sticky search input filters by name and light schemes carry a "light" badge. Selecting a scheme applies it immediately to every open terminal and agent panel.

Match App Theme

Match App Theme is the default. Rather than a fixed palette, it reads the active app theme's terminal tokens and applies them live, so switching app themes changes the terminal too. Terminal colors are a first-class part of every theme's palette, independent of the workbench surfaces and audited separately, so each of the 14 themes produces a genuinely different terminal look: there is no generic fallback. Five themes also ship a named terminal scheme with the same name (Daintree, Bondi, Fiordland, Redwoods, Hokkaido), for when you want that palette pinned regardless of the app theme.

The unified input bar inside terminal panels takes its colors from the active terminal scheme as well (background, foreground, cursor and chips), so it stays consistent with the output above it.

Settings on the Appearance tab with the Terminal subtab selected. Under the Terminal color scheme heading a Filter schemes field sits beside a Dark / Light toggle set to Dark. Below, a two-column grid of cards (Match App Theme, Daintree, Fiordland, Daintree Ember, Redwoods, Dracula), each rendering the same mini terminal session in that scheme's colors. Match App Theme carries the selected checkmark. — The color scheme picker under Settings > Appearance > Terminal

Built-in schemes

Daintree ships 25 terminal color schemes: seven Daintree originals designed to pair with the app themes, and eighteen ports of community favorites.

Daintree originals

Match App Theme: dynamic, derives colors from the active app theme
Daintree: dark, eucalyptus green paired with the Daintree app theme
Fiordland: dark, cold fjord palette with a teal cursor
Daintree Ember: dark, warm terracotta and ember tones
Redwoods: dark, forest brown and green
Hokkaido: light, frost-blue winter palette
Bondi: light, coastal teal paired with the Bondi Beach app theme

Community dark schemes

Dracula, One Dark, Monokai, Solarized Dark, GitHub Dark, Catppuccin Mocha
Tokyo Night, Gruvbox Dark, Everforest Dark, Oceanic Next, Kanagawa Dragon, Tomorrow Night

Community light schemes

Solarized Light, Rosé Pine Dawn, Catppuccin Latte, Atom One Light, Gruvbox Light, Ayu Light

Importing custom schemes

Import color scheme... sits below the picker grid. It opens a native file dialog; the selected scheme is added to your list, becomes active immediately, and persists across restarts. Three formats are recognized:

iTerm2 (.itermcolors): the XML plist format used by iTerm2 and most macOS terminals, and the most widely shared format in the terminal theming community.
Base16 JSON: files with base00 through base0F keys, following the Base16 convention common in the Neovim ecosystem.
VS Code JSON: files with terminal.ansiBlack, terminal.background and similar keys.

Format detection is automatic, based on the file extension and key patterns. Missing ANSI slots are filled with defaults.

Tip

The iTerm2-Color-Schemes repository holds several hundred free .itermcolors files that import directly.

Note

Imported terminal schemes cannot be removed through the Settings UI. Once imported, a scheme stays in the list; to stop using one, select a different scheme.