Appearance

Kranz adapts to the terminal you already use. By default it reads your terminal's background color and derives a readable palette from it, so it looks native in both light and dark profiles without configuration.

Press Ctrl+T to open the live picker.

Two places settings can live

Scope	Where	Use it for
Project	ui: in kranz.yaml	A look shared with everyone on the project
Personal	your user settings file	Your own preference across all projects

The personal file lives at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kranz/settings.yaml on Linux and ~/Library/Application Support/kranz/settings.yaml on macOS. Personal settings apply to projects that do not pin their own.

Both saves are explicit: the picker shows the exact destination path and a summary of what will be written, and nothing is saved until you confirm.

Project configuration

ui:
  theme: tokyo-night
  accent: "#7AA2F7"
  background: terminal
  color_mode: auto

Field	Values	Default	Meaning
theme	a theme name	built-in	Base palette
accent	#RRGGBB	theme accent	Highlight color
background	terminal, theme, #RRGGBB	terminal	Canvas source
color_mode	auto, dark, light	auto	Palette mode

background

• terminal — keep your terminal's own background and derive the rest of the palette from it. Transparency and background images keep working.
• theme — paint the theme's own canvas instead.
• #RRGGBB — use an exact color. Kranz derives the surrounding palette and a readable text set from it.

color_mode

auto detects whether the terminal background is light or dark. Pin dark or light when a terminal reports its background inaccurately.

Themes

Dark: kranz, tokyo-night, dracula, nord, gruvbox-dark, catppuccin-mocha, rose-pine, solarized-dark, monokai, everforest, one-dark, github-dark, ocean, forest, amber.

Light: github-light, solarized-light, cream.

Plus high-contrast for maximum legibility.

The live picker

Ctrl+T opens it. Changes preview immediately and are not saved until you ask.

• cycle themes and preview the whole palette in place;
• edit accent and the canvas color as six-digit hex, by keyboard or paste;
• cycle among the sources that actually exist — theme, project, terminal, and your custom colors — without losing a custom color you already entered;
• reload the saved project and personal appearance without restarting Kranz;
• apply temporarily, or save to the project or to your personal settings.

Colors you type are rendered exactly as entered. Kranz does not silently shift a color to satisfy a contrast rule; if a combination is unreadable, you will see that it is, and can change it.

See controls for the key bindings inside the picker.