Solarized for Emacs is an Emacs port of the Solarized theme for vim, developed by Ethan Schoonover.

You can find several screenshots of Solarized for Emacs here.

Solarized for Emacs is tested only under Emacs 24, but should be working under Emacs 23 as well. The theme is implemented in terms of customizations and deftheme and does not require the color-theme-package.

Solarized for Emacs is available for installation via the MELPA package.el repository. Assuming you've set it up you can install Solarized like this:

M-x package-install solarized-theme

This package will install two variants of the theme - solarized-light-theme and solarized-dark-theme. You can load one of the theme variants with M-x load-theme.

To load it automatically on Emacs startup add this to your init file:

(load-theme 'solarized-light t)

or

(load-theme 'solarized-dark t)

(If you want to install manually that procedure is briefly documented in the FAQ at the end of this document.)

If you don't like low-contrast modeline or fringe, you can customize them either by doing M-x customize-group solarized or setting the values using elisp code:

;; make the fringe stand out from the background
(setq solarized-distinct-fringe-background t)

;; Don't change the font for some headings and titles
(setq solarized-use-variable-pitch nil)

;; make the modeline high contrast
(setq solarized-high-contrast-mode-line t)

;; Use less bolding
(setq solarized-use-less-bold t)

;; Use more italics
(setq solarized-use-more-italic t)

;; Use less colors for indicators such as git:gutter, flycheck and similar
(setq solarized-emphasize-indicators nil)

;; Don't change size of org-mode headlines (but keep other size-changes)
(setq solarized-scale-org-headlines nil)

;; Avoid all font-size changes
(setq solarized-height-minus-1 1.0)
(setq solarized-height-plus-1 1.0)
(setq solarized-height-plus-2 1.0)
(setq solarized-height-plus-3 1.0)
(setq solarized-height-plus-4 1.0)

Note that these need to be set before load-theme is invoked for Solarized.

If you are using Emacs under X you might like the following setting which puts the underline below the font bottomline instead of the baseline.

Imho it enhances the general readability and also it fits well with the default solarized-high-contrast-mode-line setting which uses an slightly emphazised underline for the modeline to create one horizontal window border in the same manner as the vertical border.

(setq x-underline-at-descent-line t)

Please, report any problems that you find on the projects integrated issue tracker. If you've added some improvements and you want them included upstream don't hesitate to send me a patch or even better - a GitHub pull request.

Save the following files in a folder that's on your Emacs' load-path:

• dash.el - dash, a modern list library for Emacs
• solarized.el - the solarized theme

Save the following files into ~/.emacs.d/themes:

• solarized-light-theme.el
• solarized-dark-theme.el

Add this your .emacs.d:

(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path "~/.emacs.d/themes")

Now you can load the theme with the interactive function load-theme.

• Thomas Frössman

(Add yourself to the list)

Cheers,<br> Bozhidar