Omi Theme: A VS Code Theme With 12 Dark and Light Variants

You look at your editor for hours every day, so its colors matter more than most settings you change. A good VS Code theme makes code easy to scan and stays comfortable through a long session.

This guide covers what Omi Theme offers, how to install it and switch between its variants, and how to fine-tune any theme with a few lines of settings.json.

Quick answer: Omi Theme is a free, MIT-licensed color theme for VS Code with 12 variants: 7 originals (Omi Dark, Omi Light, Omi Midnight, Omi Ocean, Omi Forest, Omi Nebula, Omi Espresso) and 5 takes on community favourites (Dracula, Nord, Tokyo Night, Catppuccin, Monokai). Install it from the Extensions view by searching "Omi Theme", then press Ctrl+K Ctrl+T (Cmd+K Cmd+T on macOS) to pick a variant.

What Omi Theme is

The marketplace listing describes Omi Theme as "a modern, eye-friendly VS Code theme optimized for web and mobile development with both light and dark variants." It is published by Om Chauhan, costs nothing, and requires VS Code 1.60 or later.

The listing calls out four features:

• Enhanced syntax highlighting for Flutter and Dart
• Visual indicators for Git integration
• Error and warning highlighting
• Customization through standard VS Code settings

It also lists the languages it was tuned for:

A theme works with any language VS Code can highlight. The list above tells you where the author paid extra attention to how tokens look.

The 12 variants at a glance

Most themes give you one dark and one light option. Omi Theme ships twelve, each with its own background color.

Original variants

Community-favourite variants

If you already like one of those well-known palettes, the community-favourite variants are a quick way to try Omi Theme without giving up the look you know.

How to install Omi Theme in VS Code

1. Open VS Code.
2. Open the Extensions view with Ctrl+Shift+X (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+X (macOS).
3. Search for Omi Theme.
4. Check that the publisher is om-chauhan, then click Install.
5. Press Ctrl+K Ctrl+T (Cmd+K Cmd+T on macOS) to open the color theme picker.
6. Use the arrow keys to preview each Omi variant, and press Enter on the one you want.

You can also open the picker from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) with Preferences: Color Theme. Both methods are documented in the official VS Code themes guide.

The picker previews live, so you see each variant on your real code before committing.

How to choose a VS Code theme

"Best VS Code dark theme" lists are mostly about taste. A few practical checks matter more than popularity.

A note on eye strain: no theme fixes it on its own. Screen brightness, room lighting, font size and regular breaks matter at least as much. Pick the variant you can read comfortably, and adjust if your eyes tell you otherwise.

Dark or light?

Dark themes are popular in dim rooms. Light themes often read better in bright environments. Omi Theme covers both, and VS Code can switch between them for you with the window.autoDetectColorScheme setting, which follows your operating system's light or dark mode.

Customize Omi Theme in settings.json

Omi Theme is customizable through standard VS Code settings, so you can adjust any color without forking the theme. Open the Command Palette and run Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON), then add something like this:

json
{
  "workbench.colorTheme": "Omi Dark",
  "window.autoDetectColorScheme": true,
  "workbench.preferredDarkColorTheme": "Omi Dark",
  "workbench.preferredLightColorTheme": "Omi Light",
  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "[Omi Dark]": {
      "editor.lineHighlightBackground": "#2d2d30",
      "sideBar.background": "#1e1e1e"
    }
  },
  "editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
    "[Omi Dark]": {
      "comments": "#7f8c8d"
    }
  }
}

What each setting does:

• workbench.colorTheme sets the active theme. Use the name exactly as it appears in the theme picker.
• window.autoDetectColorScheme switches between your preferred dark and light themes when your OS changes mode.
• workbench.preferredDarkColorTheme and workbench.preferredLightColorTheme set which themes that switch uses.
• workbench.colorCustomizations changes interface colors such as the sidebar, tabs and line highlight.
• editor.tokenColorCustomizations changes syntax colors such as comments, strings and keywords.

The "[Omi Dark]" wrapper limits an override to that one theme, so switching to Omi Ocean or Omi Light leaves your tweaks behind instead of clashing with a different palette. The hex values in the example are only illustrations; pick your own.

Since settings.json is plain JSON, a single missing comma breaks it. If VS Code reports an error, run the file through a validator; our guide on how to format JSON and XML covers the common mistakes.

Find the right token to change

To change one specific color, run Developer: Inspect Editor Tokens and Scopes from the Command Palette and click on the code you want to adjust. It shows the token's scope, which you can target with a textMateRules entry inside editor.tokenColorCustomizations.

Pair the theme with a good font

Colors are half of readability. The other half is the font. A monospaced font with clear differences between 0 and O, and between 1, l and I, prevents small reading errors. Set it with editor.fontFamily, and adjust editor.fontSize and editor.lineHeight until long files feel comfortable.

Switch fonts and theme variants one at a time. Changing both at once makes it hard to tell which change helped.

Where Omi Theme fits in your setup

A theme is one part of a comfortable editor. If you write Flutter, pair Omi Theme's Dart highlighting with our Flutter snippets extension guide to cut down on boilerplate. For the browser side of your work, see what developer tools are and our list of developer utilities for each task.

You can find Omi Theme alongside other Ytools projects on its tool page.

FAQ

Is Omi Theme free? Yes. Omi Theme is free on the Visual Studio Marketplace and released under the MIT license.

How do I switch between Omi Theme variants? Press Ctrl+K Ctrl+T (Cmd+K Cmd+T on macOS) and choose a variant from the list. You can also set workbench.colorTheme in settings.json.

Does Omi Theme have a light mode? Yes. Omi Light uses a #F3F3F3 background and is described as a clean Material Design light mode. The other 11 variants are dark.

Which VS Code version do I need? The marketplace listing requires VS Code 1.60 or later.

Can I change individual colors without editing the theme? Yes. Use workbench.colorCustomizations for interface colors and editor.tokenColorCustomizations for syntax colors, wrapped in "[Variant Name]" to target one variant.

How do I go back to my old theme? Open the theme picker again and select your previous theme. Uninstalling the extension also returns VS Code to a default theme.

Conclusion

Omi Theme gives you twelve variants in one install, from the neutral Omi Dark to the pure-black Omi Midnight and the warm Omi Espresso, plus a light mode for bright rooms. Install it, preview each variant on your own code with Ctrl+K Ctrl+T, and use settings.json to adjust anything that doesn't suit you.

Install Omi Theme from the Visual Studio Marketplace