Eclipse's Package explorer background color follows windows theme. I want to change the color without changing windows' theme. Possible?

Question

Maybe a way to alter the colors locally (as in application dependant)?

A background color of eclipse is white, the same white of windows' active window background color. If I change the color on the theme, eclipse changes to the color.

I want to change this software's color without changing the whole theme (because then every program gets weird colors). Is this possible? I thought that maybe there was a way to apply different windows themes to different programs, or something.

I'm using windows XP, classic windows theme.

Answer 1

Knowing the way the workbench is built, I'm sure your request is not possible on the Eclipse side. You can do this for the editors, because they are StyledText widgets, and you are exposed some preferences to customize these. The other views are various widgets, some are Trees, some are Text, some are composed from various other widgets. All of them are created with the default constructor which just uses the Windows theme.

Answer 2

Install the "Eclipse 4 Chrome Theme" from http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/eclipse-4-chrome-theme

Then you can customize a lot of the Eclipse UI widgets. But not what you want, at least not out of the box. For that you should go to the CSS tab (in Eclipse 4 Chrome Theme) and paste this:

Tree, List, Table {
  background-color: #202020;
  color: #d0d0d0;
}

You can change almost anything, the problem is finding out what, and the fact that some things are bitmaps that you can't change (so if the bitmap is dark and you set a dark background you will "loose" the bitmap)

This list of widgets might help, http://download.eclipse.org/rt/rap/doc/1.5/help/html/reference/theming/index.html but they give you generic info on the widget names, not the Eclipse info (with IDs and all), so be careful :-)

== Very late addition ==

Everything you need in one place, including links to a custom dark theme: http://mihai-nita.net/2013/09/19/dark-eclipse/

Mac Screen Shot Example as of Sept 2013 (please be sure to restart Eclipse after changing file):

Answer 3

Just search "Theme" in the Eclipse Market Place. Install Moonrise. (Should be first option). Then go to the General, appearance, Click on appearance, change theme to moonrise, Then there you go.

Answer 4

I don't know of a way to change every Eclipse window to your color scheme, but I can get you at least as far as changing some of the editing windows...

Open up "Window -> Preferences", then under "General | Editors | Text Editors" you will find a section that will allow you to set the "Appearance color options", Background color is one of those options.

PS: I'm using Eclipse 3.6 (Helios)

Answer 5

Sadly, this is not possible (which is crazy).
However, Aptana Studio (which is an Eclipse derivative) lets you theme the entire IDE.

Answer 6

I did some research and found that actualy it is posible to change all colors, but abit harder. there are two methods that I found so far.

first since eclipse is using OS themes, you can change your OS background settings, like folder background etc., or just change the whole theme if your using windows, but the downside is that all windowses will be same color, in linux and mac os it is also posible, but in different way, I did read it somewhere, but can't remember where :)

second creating a specific theme for eclipse, for example http://rogerdudler.github.io/eclipse-ui-themes/ or any other theme like google chrome etc.

Answer 7

Install the theme from here as per the instruction in the github: https:// github.com/guari/eclipse-ui-theme

If you don't like the editor color theme, there are bunch of 'em here http://eclipsecolorthemes.org/

Combination of both just works like charm for me!