Nix Colors

About

This repo is designed to help with Nix(OS) theming.

At the core, we expose a nix attribute set with 220+ base16 schemes, as well as a home-manager module for globally setting your preferred one.

These schemes are not vendored in: they are directly fetch (and flake locked!) from base16-schemes, then converted using our (pure nix) schemeFromYAML function, which is also exposed for your convenience. This means you can easily make your own schemes, in either nix-colors (.nix) or base16 (.yaml) format, freely converting between the two.

The core portion of nix-colors is very unopinionated and should work with all possible workflows very easily, without any boilerplate code.

We also have some optional contrib functions for opinionated, common use cases (generating scheme from image, generating wallpaper, vim scheme, gtk theme).

Base16?

Base16 is a standard for defining palettes (schemes), and how each app should be themed (templates).

nix-colors focuses on delivering and helping you use the schemes, all in a Nix-friendly way.

Setup

The usual setup looks like this:

• Either add the repo to your flake inputs, or add the channel on a legacy setup.
• Import the home-manager module nix-colors.homeManagerModules.default
• Set the option colorScheme to your preferred color scheme, such as nix-colors.colorSchemes.dracula (or create/convert your own)
• Use config.colorScheme.colors.base0X to refer to any of the 16 colors from anywhere!

Importing

Flake

First add nix-colors to your flake inputs:

{
  inputs = {
    # ...
    nix-colors.url = "github:misterio77/nix-colors";
  };
}

Then, you need some way to pass this onwards to your home-manager configuration.

If you're using standalone home-manager, use extraSpecialArgs for this:

homeConfigurations = {
  "foo@bar" = home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration {
    # ...
    extraSpecialArgs = { inherit nix-colors; };
  };
};

Or, if using it as a NixOS module, use specialArgs on your flake (and extraSpecialArgs wherever you import your home nix file):

nixosConfigurations = {
  bar = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
    # ...
    specialArgs = { inherit nix-colors; };
  };
};

Legacy (non-flake)

If you're not using flakes, the most convenient method is adding nix-colors to your channels:

nix-channel --add https://github.com/misterio77/nix-colors/archive/main.tar.gz nix-colors
nix-channel --update

Then, instead of adding nix-colors as a argument in your config file(s), use a let binding. For example:

{ pkgs, config, ... }: # Don't put 'nix-colors' here
let
  nix-colors = import <nix-colors> { };
in {
  import = [
    nix-colors.homeManagerModules.default
  ];

  colorScheme = nix-colors.colorSchemes.paraiso;

  # ...
}

Using

With that done, move on to your home manager configuration.

You should import the nix-colors.homeManagerModules.default, and set the option colorScheme to your preferred scheme, such as nix-colors.colorSchemes.dracula

Here's a quick example on how to use it with, say, a terminal emulator (kitty) and a browser (qutebrowser):

{ pkgs, config, nix-colors, ... }: {
  imports = [
    nix-colors.homeManagerModules.default
  ];

  colorScheme = nix-colors.colorSchemes.dracula;

  programs = {
    kitty = {
      enable = true;
      settings = {
        foreground = "#${config.colorScheme.colors.base05}";
        background = "#${config.colorScheme.colors.base00}";
        # ...
      };
    };
    qutebrowser = {
      enable = true;
      colors = {
        # Becomes either 'dark' or 'light', based on your colors!
        webppage.preferred_color_scheme = "${config.colorScheme.kind}";
        tabs.bar.bg = "#${config.colorScheme.colors.base00}";
        keyhint.fg = "#${config.colorScheme.colors.base05}";
        # ...
      };
    };
  };
}

If you change colorScheme for anything else (say, nix-colors.colorSchemes.nord), both qutebrowser and kitty will match the new scheme! Awesome!

You can, of course, specify (or generate somehow) your nix-colors scheme directly:

{
  colorScheme = {
    slug = "pasque";
    name = "Pasque";
    author = "Gabriel Fontes (https://github.com/Misterio77)";
    colors = {
      base00 = "#271C3A";
      base01 = "#100323";
      base02 = "#3E2D5C";
      base03 = "#5D5766";
      base04 = "#BEBCBF";
      base05 = "#DEDCDF";
      base06 = "#EDEAEF";
      base07 = "#BBAADD";
      base08 = "#A92258";
      base09 = "#918889";
      base0A = "#804ead";
      base0B = "#C6914B";
      base0C = "#7263AA";
      base0D = "#8E7DC6";
      base0E = "#953B9D";
      base0F = "#59325C";
    };
  };
}

This is it for basic usage! You're ready to nixify your colors. Read on if you're interested in converting schemes between our format and base16's, or want to check out our opinionated contrib functions.

Lib functions

Core

Our core functions do not require nixpkgs. Nix all the way down (at least until you get to nix-the-package-manager code) baby!

All of these are exposed at nix-colors.lib.

schemeFromYAML

This function is used internally to convert base16's schemes to nix-colors format, but is exposed so you can absolutely do the same.

Just grab (or create yours) a .yaml file, read it into a string (with readFile, for example) and you're golden:

{ nix-colors, ... }:
{
  colorScheme = nix-colors.lib.schemeFromYAML "cool-scheme" (builtins.readFile ./cool-scheme.yaml);
}

This path can come from wherever nix can read, even another repo! That's what we do to expose base16's schemes.

schemeToYAML

Maybe you took a liking to writting (or generating) colors in nix-colors sweet nix syntax, but want to contribute back to base16. No, no, don't write that YAML by hand!

We have a schemeToYAML for converting from nix-colors's .nix to base16's .yaml format.

Grab your nix-colors scheme, pass it to the function, and you get the YAML string (you can write it toFile if you want) in return. Here's an example with nix-repl:

$ nix repl
nix-repl> :lf .
nix-repl> bultins.toFile "pasque.yaml" (inputs.nix-colors.lib.schemeToYAML inputs.nix-colors.colorSchemes.pasque)

More soon(TM)

We plan on helping you turn existing base16 templates into nifty nix functions real soon, as well as converting colors between hex and decimal. Stay tuned!

Contributed functions

We also have a few opinionated functions for some common scheme usecases: such as generating schemes from an image, generating an image from a scheme... You get the idea.

These nifty pals are listed (and documented) at lib/contrib/default.nix. They are exposed at nix-colors.lib.contrib.

Do note these require nixpkgs, however. You should pass your pkgs instance to nix-colors.lib.contrib to use them. For example:

{ pkgs, nix-colors, ... }:

let
  nix-colors-lib = nix-colors.lib.contrib { inherit pkgs; };
in {
  colorScheme = nix-colors-lib.colorSchemeFromPicture {
    path = ./wallpapers/example.png;
    kind = "light";
  };
}

Upstreaming new schemes

Please please upstream nice schemes you have created!

It's pretty easy to do. Just open up a PR on base16-schemes, and once it's in it will be available here.

If it takes a while to be merged, you can temporarily put it together with your config and use schemeFromYAML to load it.

Alternatively, you can tell nix-colors to follow your base16-schemes fork.

In your flake inputs, add base16-schemes and override nix-colors.inputs.base16-schemes.follows:

{
  description = "Your cool config flake";
  inputs = {
    base16-schemes = "github:you/base16-schemes"; # Your base16-schemes fork

    nix-colors.url = "github:misterio77/nix-colors";
    nix-colors.inputs.base16-schemes.follows = "base16-schemes"; # Be sure to add this
    # ...
  };
  # ...
}

Thanks

Special thanks to rycee for most of this repo's inspiration, plus for the amazing home-manager.

Huge thanks for everyone involved with base16.

Gigantic thanks to arcnmx, for his pure-nix fromYAML function.

Extra special thanks for my folks at the NixOS Brasil Telegram group, for willing to try this out!