---
title: Themes and transparency
description: Colors, light and dark, and letting your desktop show through the window.
---

Open **Settings > Theme**. It has three groups: **Colours**, **Transparency**, and **Chat and terminal**. Each has a **More** row with the finer controls.

## Colours

- **Appearance**: **System** (the default, follows your computer), **Light** or **Dark**.
- **Dark mode colour** and **Light mode colour**: sixteen colors to pick from, like Graphite, Midnight, Teal or Rose, plus a **+** square for a color of your own.
- **Colourfulness**: how much of that color shows in the sidebar and the work area, from **Subtle** to **Vivid**.

The accent color follows your dark theme's color.

## Transparency

Window glass lets your desktop show softly through the sidebar, the work area, terminals and chat, on macOS, Windows and Linux.

- **Transparency**: **Off**, **Dark only** (the default on macOS and Linux) or **Always**. On Windows it starts **Off**.
- **Strength** sets how see-through it is, and **Blur** how soft the background looks. On Windows, Blur is a choice: **Acrylic**, **Plain blur** or **Off**.
- **Behind the glass** picks what shows through: **Desktop and windows**, **Wallpaper only**, a **Picture** of your own for dark and light mode, or **Live**: a calm animation drawn in your theme's colors (Aurora, Ink, Drift, Nebula, Silk, Bokeh, Waves or Mesh), or your own video on macOS and Linux.
- **Live** pauses when Ghostex is in the background and, with **Play only when plugged in** on, on battery.

Files, Kanban, the Browser and the code editor stay solid. Reduce transparency (macOS) or turning off Transparency effects (Windows) always makes the window solid.

## Chat and terminal

**Chat theme** and **Terminal theme** follow the app by default. Set either to Light, Dark or System to give it its own look, for example a light chat in a dark app. **Terminal palettes** picks the terminal's colors. See [Terminal](/customize/terminal) for fonts and the rest.

## Size and zoom

- **Sidebar Interface Size** (Settings > General) scales the sidebar.
- **Default chat zoom** (Settings > General) scales every chat. In a chat, **Cmd+=** and **Cmd+-** change it, and **Cmd+0** resets it.

:::tip[Ask Ghostex]
Try "Switch to the light theme" or "Show a live animation behind the window."
:::