Bug 507405

Summary:	Make Kate able to switch color schemes with either a terminal command or programmable in the GUI
Product:	[Applications] kate	Reporter:	Luckiest Venus <LuckiestVenus>
Component:	general	Assignee:	KWrite Developers <kwrite-bugs-null>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	christoph, waqar.17a
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Luckiest Venus 2025-07-23 18:28:49 UTC

Kate has a lot of color schemes available.
Currently, the only way (that I know of) to automate color scheme switching is by leaving the default Breeze colors and switching the system to light/dark mode. Otherwise, you need to change it manually in the GUI or in katerc (and restart Kate so the changes take effect... Kate could watch that change in the config file and apply it)

It would be amazing if Kate was able to extend that feature to other color schemes (you get an interface that allows you to select light theme and dark theme). 
Other possibility would be to expose the color scheme setting to KDE's command line tools, so that it can be programmable by users (and for the love of god, make the setting apply to already running Kate instances, to avoid having to restart the program).

Comment 1 Waqar Ahmed 2025-07-24 06:54:21 UTC

Your request is too vague. I am having hard time understanding what's the issue.

Comment 2 Luckiest Venus 2025-07-25 02:52:29 UTC

(In reply to Waqar Ahmed from comment #1)
> Your request is too vague. I am having hard time understanding what's the
> issue.
The problem is, you can't interact with the theme switching code from outside of Kate in a way that automatically changes running instances of Kate. Kate only reads the theme from the config file when it loads the program on launch. 
No dbus or setting in Kate gives you that option. 
What I am asking is: 
1) expose the setting so that people who program or need that automated can change themes more efficiently
2) make it configurable on XYZ condition (light/dark mode preference?) inside of Kate's GUI settings

Comment 3 Waqar Ahmed 2025-07-25 06:37:47 UTC

>  you can't interact with the theme switching code

What is theme switching here? Window theme? Editor theme?

> make it configurable on XYZ condition (light/dark mode preference?) inside of Kate's GUI settings

No idea what you mean here.

Comment 4 Luckiest Venus 2025-07-25 23:29:46 UTC

(In reply to Waqar Ahmed from comment #3)
> >  you can't interact with the theme switching code
> 
> What is theme switching here? Window theme? Editor theme?
> 
> > make it configurable on XYZ condition (light/dark mode preference?) inside of Kate's GUI settings
> 
> No idea what you mean here.

The color scheme of the text inside the text editor section (the option that gives you things like ayu, gruvbox, monokai, dracula. That change the look of the text and syntax highlighting). You can only change that setting from the GUI (or by editing katerc and restarting kate).

Comment 5 Christoph Cullmann 2025-07-26 15:23:05 UTC

I guess the minimal effort would be to allow the specify which theme to use for light and dark auto switch.

But I don't think that is such a common wish, if somebody wants that, patches would be nice.