154
I like Gruvbox but also contrast... (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Ephera@lemmy.ml to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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The theme comes in three variants, "Soft Light", "Medium Light" and "Hard Light". Soft and Medium are even yellower. This is so often the case with Gruvbox themes. I just want a white background, is that so unusual? ๐Ÿซ 

(Yes, that's a screenshot of my terminal with the theme applied. Yes, I am one of those monsters that use a terminal with light theme.)

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[-] JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 1 day ago

You're transgression has been noted. The gruvbox police will be over to collect four shortly for light theme crimes. /j

I'll be honest I don't even know vhat gruvbox is.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

As far as I'm aware, it started out with a Vim color scheme, which looks like this:


https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox

And yeah, that's just become a really popular theme, which got ported to virtually anything that can be themed.
Personally, I really like the color palette, but not that so many takes on it have text that's horrendously difficult to read...

[-] Botzo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

"Hard" (high contrast) should use the bg0_h value for the background: #f9f5d7 or rgb(249,245,215).

This is a light "off white". If you have blue blocking mode or a night color mode enabled, the yellowing effect will be exaggerated.

For what is worth, I don't think gruvbox makes a good light theme because it's pretty low contrast especially compared to a lot of more recent themes. I say this as a die hard gruvbox dark user.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

I guess, what really bothers me here in particular is the extra low contrast. The background does actually use the correct color, that you point out. But the foreground/text color is #654735. That's brown:

Screenshot of a color picker, where the color is visible as brown. It's almost halfway in terms brightness and saturation towards an orange.

I don't know where that color comes from. None of the original Gruvbox colors are that. It is dubbed as a "Gruvbox Material" theme. I do have opinions about the new Material You styles having shit contrast. But I don't believe, it's supposed to be quite as terrible either.

And well, yeah, I do usually end up modifying the Gruvbox themes to just set background to #ffffff, foreground to #000000, or vice versa for dark themes. It does work quite well IMHO, which is what makes it all the more frustrating that so many Gruvbox-like themes choose to go the other way.

[-] Botzo@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Material themes definitely tend to be softer. I hate them as a rule.

Gruvbox material fg0 definition

Edit:

Surprisingly, this passes a basic accessibility check. https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=654735&bcolor=F9F5D7

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Oh man, you keep finding these hex values in other places. I assumed the author of this particular theme just made them up, based on what they thought looked good.

And yeah, that is wild to me, that it passes a contrast check. I'm far from having the worst eyesight and still find it needlessly difficult to read.

[-] juipeltje@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

Gruvbox is probably my favorite theme. I configured a handfull of themes for my rice but gruvbox and tokyonight are the ones i use the most. I'm a dark user though >:)

[-] serpineslair@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I use my own theme gruvbox_super_dark.... Literally Gruvbox Hard Dark, with a fully #000000 background.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I do customize the themes like that, too, usually also #ffffff for the foreground or vice versa. It would just be nice to not need to maintain my own themes. ๐Ÿฅด

[-] serpineslair@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah it'd be nice if Gruvbox shipped with those as options.

[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago

Do people still use light themes? Wild.

[-] Markuso213@piefed.social 10 points 1 day ago

For bright situations, 100%.

Like working on a sunny balcony is far more comfortable with a light theme than a dark theme. Perhaps with a really good AMOLED screen I could still vibe with the dark, but in general I'd go light with (particularly) bright surroundings.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

I try to kick my circadian rhythm with ample light, so for that I switch between light and dark theme more or less around sunrise/sunset. Staring into a bright screen with light theme isn't as bright as being outside, but then I can at least also turn on all kinds of lights or sit outside somewhere, without it being as detrimental to readability as it would be with a dark theme.

[-] UNY0N@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

You should try this out. I haven't tried it myself, but I've been meaning to.

https://github.com/luisbocanegra/kde-material-you-colors

this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
154 points (97.0% liked)

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