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Choose a theme

Open Settings › Appearance & Behavior › Appearance and pick a Theme. Built-in themes: Themes from installed plugins appear in the same list, under the plugin’s name.
  • Sync with OS follows the system’s light or dark mode. While it is on, the Theme list is disabled; pick the theme for each mode with Preferred theme for light OS mode and Preferred theme for dark OS mode in the options next to it.
  • View › Appearance › Toggle Light/Dark Theme switches between Islands Light and Islands Dark.
  • View › Quick Switch Scheme… (⌃` / Ctrl+`) › Theme previews themes as you move through the list.
  • The Welcome screen’s Customize page has the same theme and accent choices.
The same page also has:
  • Accent colour: the UI’s accent colour.
  • Different tool window background: set tool windows apart from the editor.
  • Accessibility: Use contrast scrollbars and Adjust colors for red-green vision deficiency (for protanopia and deuteranopia).
  • Compact mode under UI Options.

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Editor color scheme

The editor’s syntax colours come from a color scheme. In Settings › Appearance & Behavior › Appearance, Editor color scheme is Theme default unless you change it: the scheme of the current theme. Choose another built-in scheme or one you imported to keep the same editor colours under any theme. Settings › Editor › Color Scheme edits schemes:
  • Select an element in the tree and change its foreground, background, bold, italic and effects. Changes are stored per scheme; Restore Defaults drops them.
  • Language Defaults has Semantic highlighting (local variables and parameters get a colour derived from their name) and Rainbow brackets (brackets coloured by depth).
  • Import Scheme reads an IntelliJ color scheme (.icls) exported from a JetBrains IDE. If a scheme with the same name exists, choose Overwrite or Keep Both. Export Scheme writes the selected scheme as .icls.

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IntelliJ themes

IntelliJ UI themes can be converted into OpenIDEA themes. With a project open, go to Settings › Plugins, open the gear menu and choose:
  • Import Theme from JetBrains IDE… to pick a theme plugin installed in your JetBrains IDEs, or
  • Import IntelliJ Theme from File… for a theme plugin .jar, a Marketplace .zip, a plugin folder or a .theme.json file.
OpenIDEA converts the theme (and the editor scheme it bundles, if any) into a theme plugin and installs it. The theme in use doesn’t change; select the new one under Theme.

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Theme and icon plugins

Settings › Plugins also offers theme and file icon theme plugins from the marketplace. Once a file icon theme is installed, File icon theme appears on the Appearance page. Icon themes with options get a settings page of their own. To create a theme or icon theme, see Themes and Icon themes in the plugin guide.

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Fonts

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Editor font

Settings › Editor › Font:
  • Font: the editor font family. Show only monospaced fonts narrows the list. The default is JetBrains Mono, bundled with OpenIDEA.
  • Size and Line height.
  • Enable ligatures for fonts with programming ligatures.
  • Typography Settings: Main font weight, Bold font weight, and a Fallback font for characters the main font lacks.
To change the size temporarily, use Increase Font Size (⌥⇧. / Alt+Shift+.) and Decrease Font Size (⌥⇧, / Alt+Shift+,); View › Reset Font Size in All Editors goes back. On macOS, Change font size with Command+Mouse Wheel in Settings › Editor › General enables wheel zoom.

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UI font and zoom

On the Appearance page under Accessibility:
  • Use custom font: sets the UI font, a UI fallback font and the size for menus, tool windows and dialogs. The default UI font is Inter.
  • Zoom scales the whole IDE. View › Appearance › Zoom In IDE, Zoom Out IDE and Reset IDE Zoom do the same from the menu (⌃⌥=, ⌃⌥-, ⌃⌥0 on macOS; Alt+Shift+=, Alt+Shift+-, Alt+Shift+0 on Windows and Linux).

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Terminal font

The terminal uses the editor font by default. To give it its own font, turn off Use editor font in Settings › Tools › Terminal.