Base16 Shell

See the Base16 repository for more information.

A shell script to change your shell's default ANSI colors but most importantly, colors 17 to 21 of your shell's 256 colorspace (if supported by your terminal). This script makes it possible to honor the original bright colors of your shell (e.g. bright green is still green and so on) while providing additional base16 colors to applications such as Vim and tmux.

Use Cases

You want to use a *.256.* variant of a Terminal theme designed to honor the original bright colors.
You prefer to use a script instead of a terminal emulator theme to color your shell.
You use this script to have different colorschemes appear on different SSH sessions.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/tinted-theming/base16-shell.git \
  $HOME/.config/base16-shell

Bash/ZSH

Add following lines to .bashrc or .zshrc:

# Base16 Shell
BASE16_SHELL_PATH="$HOME/.config/base16-shell"
[ -n "$PS1" ] && \
  [ -s "$BASE16_SHELL_PATH/profile_helper.sh" ] && \
    source "$BASE16_SHELL_PATH/profile_helper.sh"

Oh my zsh

mkdir $HOME/.oh-my-zsh/plugins/base16-shell
ln -s $HOME/.config/base16-shell/base16-shell.plugin.zsh \
  $HOME/.oh-my-zsh/plugins/base16-shell/base16-shell.plugin.zsh

To use it, add base16-shell to the plugins array in your .zshrc file:

plugins=(... base16-shell)

Fish

Add following lines to $HOME/.config/fish/config.fish:

# Base16 Shell
if status --is-interactive
  set BASE16_SHELL_PATH "$HOME/.config/base16-shell"
  if test -s "$BASE16_SHELL_PATH"
    source "$BASE16_SHELL_PATH/profile_helper.fish"
  end
end

Configuration

Base16-Vim Users

Vim

The BASE16_THEME environment variable will set to your current colorscheme. You can set the base16-vim colorscheme to the BASE16_THEME environment variable by adding the following to your .vimrc:

if exists('$BASE16_THEME')
    \ && (!exists('g:colors_name') 
    \ || g:colors_name != 'base16-$BASE16_THEME')
  let base16colorspace=256
  colorscheme base16-$BASE16_THEME
endif

Remove the base16colorspace line if it is not needed.

Neovim

If you have a lua neovim config, add the following to your init.lua:

local cmd = vim.cmd
local g = vim.g

local current_theme_name = os.getenv('BASE16_THEME')
if current_theme_name and g.colors_name ~= 'base16-'..current_theme_name then
  cmd('let base16colorspace=256')
  cmd('colorscheme base16-'..current_theme_name)
end

Tmux & Vim

You should source the set_theme scripts to initialise your Vim theme. This is necessary due to the way TMUX sessions handle environment variables. Without this you may run into the issue where you've changed your theme, but Vim loads with the theme you initialised TMUX with.

Vim

if filereadable(expand("$HOME/.config/tinted-theming/set_theme.vim"))
  let base16colorspace=256
  source $HOME/.config/tinted-theming/set_theme.vim
endif

Neovim (Lua)

local fn = vim.fn
local cmd = vim.cmd
local set_theme_path = "$HOME/.config/tinted-theming/set_theme.lua"
local is_set_theme_file_readable = fn.filereadable(fn.expand(set_theme_path)) == 1 and true or false

if is_set_theme_file_readable then
  cmd("let base16colorspace=256")
  cmd("source " .. set_theme_path)
end

Hooks

You can create your own base16-shell hooks. These scripts will execute every time you use base16-shell to change your theme. When a theme is changed via the command line alias prefixes, all executable scripts will then be sourced.

The hooks are used to switch the base16-tmux theme. If you want to use your own $BASE16_SHELL_HOOKS_PATH directory, make sure to copy the $BASE16_SHELL_PATH/hooks files across and set the $BASE16_SHELL_HOOKS_PATH variable before sourcing base16-shell profile_helper.

Tmux

You will automatically use this hook if you have installed base16-tmux through TPM. base16-shell will update (or create) the $HOME/.config/tinted-theming/tmux.base16.conf file and set the colorscheme. You need to source this file in your .tmux.conf. You can do this by adding the following to your .tmux.conf:

source-file $HOME/.config/tinted-theming/tmux.base16.conf

FZF

Clone base16-fzf to $HOME/.config/base16-fzf. Once that is done the hook will automatically pick that up and things will work as expected.

If you'd like to install to a different path, you can do that and set $BASE16_FZF_PATH to your custom path.

HexChat (XChat)

Clone base16-hexchat to $HOME/base16-hexchat. Or optionally install to a custom path and set $BASE16_HEXCHAT_PATH to that path.
Set the $HEXCHAT_COLORS_CONF_PATH shell variable to your hexchat colors.conf file. If you don't know where that is, read the base16-hexchat repo for more information. the hook will automatically pick that up and things will work as expected.

Note: Restart HexChat after you've changed the theme with base16-shell to apply changes.

Keeping your themes up to date

To update, just git pull wherever you've cloned base16-shell. The themes are updated on a weekly basis thanks to GitHub Actions. See the GitHub Actions workflow in .github/workflows/update.yml.

Default theme

You can set the $BASE16_THEME_DEFAULT environment variable to the name of a theme and it will use that theme if there is no theme currently set. This can be useful for when you're using your dotfiles in a brand new environment and you don't want to manually set the theme for the first time.

For example: $BASE16_THEME_DEFAULT="solarized-light"

Default config path

You can customize where the generated configuration of this script is stored by setting the $BASE16_CONFIG_PATH environment variable before the profile_helper script is loaded. This variable defaults to $HOME/.config/tinted-theming.

If you are using oh-my-zsh you need to set this variable before oh-my-zsh.sh is sourced in your .zshrc.

Usage

Bash/ZSH

Theme aliases are prefixed with base16_. Type that in the command line and press tab to perform tab-completion.

All relevant scripts have the extension .sh

Fish

Theme aliases are prefixed with base16-. Type that in the command line and press tab to perform tab-completion.

All relevant scripts have the extension .fish

Customization using base16-shell

There are times when base16 templates don't exist for command line applications, or perhaps you just want to play around with base16 colors. For those situations you can access active base16-shell theme colors via BASE16_COLOR_01_HEX to BASE16_COLOR_09_HEX for colors 0-9 and BASE16_COLOR_0A_HEX to BASE16_COLOR_0F_HEX for colors 10-16. Have a look at the styling guidlines for more information.

To enable this feature, make sure to export BASE16_SHELL_ENABLE_VARS=1 before base16-shell is loaded.

Troubleshooting

Run the included colortest script and check that your colour assignments appear correct. If your teminal does not support the setting of colours in within the 256 colorspace (e.g. Apple Terminal), colours 17 to 21 will appear blue.

If colortest is run without any arguments e.g. ./colortest the hex values shown will correspond to the default scheme. If you'd like to see the hex values for a particular scheme pass the file name of the theme as the arguement e.g. ./colortest base16-ocean.sh.

Inverted blacks and whites

This is the expected behaviour when using a light theme: https://github.com/tinted-theming/base16-shell/issues/150

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md, which contains building and contributing instructions.

lgranie/base16-shell

Base16 Shell

Use Cases

Installation

Bash/ZSH

Oh my zsh

Fish

Configuration

Base16-Vim Users

Vim

Neovim

Tmux & Vim

Hooks

Tmux

FZF

HexChat (XChat)

Keeping your themes up to date

Default theme

Default config path

Usage

Bash/ZSH

Fish

Customization using base16-shell

Troubleshooting

Inverted blacks and whites

Contributing