Appearance
Mel's look: the theme, fonts, and how blocks and tabs render.
Mel ships eight built-in themes, four dark and four light, and you pick one in Settings ▸ Appearance. The same page sets zoom, type size, the text cursor and how blocks and panes are drawn. Whatever theme you pick, your tools' own colours are left exactly as they print them.
Themes
Open Settings ▸ Appearance. Under Theme, choose Dark, Light or System (follow your operating system), then click a card in the grid to pick the theme each mode paints. A click applies at once; there's nothing to save. With System, Mel switches between your dark pick and your light pick as your computer does.
| Dark themes | Light themes |
|---|---|
| Mel Dark: near-black, the look Mel launched with | Mel Light: cool white paper |
| Midnight: deep blue-black | Paper: warm white |
| Graphite: neutral charcoal, lifted off black | Mist: cool grey-blue |
| Forest: deep evergreen | Lilac: pale violet-grey |
Each card in the grid is drawn in its own theme's colours, so it shows what you'd get before you click it.
What each theme looks like
These are colour previews, drawn from the colour values each theme ships with: the page, a command block, the chips and the input.
Mel Dark
Midnight
Graphite
Forest
Mel Light
Paper
Mist
Lilac
What a theme changes, and what it never does
A theme changes surfaces, lines and neutral text. What a colour means never changes between themes: green for good news and for anything that needs you, pink for a problem, red for a failure, and Mel's logo blue as the accent. Mel uses no amber or orange anywhere.
ANSI colours are sacred: your tools' own colours are parsed from the raw output and preserved exactly; Mel never restyles command output. See Blocks.
Themes in the settings file
The choice is saved in ~/.mel/settings.json as three keys:
| Key | Values |
|---|---|
theme | dark, light or system |
theme_dark | dark (Mel Dark), midnight, graphite or forest |
theme_light | light (Mel Light), paper, mist or lilac |
An unknown or misplaced name (a light theme in theme_dark) falls back to Mel Dark or Mel Light, and nothing else in the file is affected.
Keyboard
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Open the theme picker | Open Theme Picker in Settings ▸ Keyboard shortcuts has no key by default; give it one and it opens Settings ▸ Appearance |
| Zoom in, out, reset | Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0 (⌘ on a Mac) |
Type
Mel's interface uses Manrope, and code, terminal output and the prompt use JetBrains Mono, the same on every system. A system symbol font backs glyphs like ⇧, ⌥ and ✓ so shortcut chips render on every platform.
Settings → Appearance
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Theme | Dark, light or follow the OS, with a theme for each |
| Zoom | UI scale: 80, 90, 100, 110, 125 or 150 % (also Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0, ⌘ on a Mac) |
| Font size | Terminal and editor text size |
| Text cursor — Shape | Bar, block or underline, in the prompts and the terminal |
| Blinking cursor | Whether the text cursor blinks |
| Show block dividers | The thin hairline between consecutive blocks |
| Compact block header | Folds the directory + time into the command row; the selected block keeps the full header |
| Dim inactive panes | Reduces brightness of panes without focus in a split |
| Focus follows mouse | Focuses a pane when the pointer moves over it |
| Graphics — Renderer | Which renderer is drawing Mel. If the fast renderer crashed and Mel switched to the safe one, Try the fast renderer again appears here |
Changes apply immediately and persist in ~/.mel/settings.json — a plain JSON file you can edit or check in; see Settings files.
Screen readers
VoiceOver on macOS and Narrator on Windows can read Mel's own buttons and cards, by the words you see on them.
Elsewhere in settings
A few appearance-adjacent switches live on other pages: Show input hint text is under AI settings — see Autocomplete — line numbers in the editor are under Editor and Code Review, and the sidebar row density and content are in the rail's own customization popup (the sliders icon), covered in Tab customization.
Related
- Blocks — dividers, selection cards, headers
- Split panes — where dimming inactive panes applies
FAQ
What themes does Mel's AI terminal have? Eight: Mel Dark, Midnight, Graphite and Forest (dark), and Mel Light, Paper, Mist and Lilac (light).
Can Mel follow my system's dark mode? Yes. Choose System under Theme, and pick one dark and one light theme in the grid. Mel switches between them when your computer does.
Can I make my own theme or set a background image? Not today. Mel has the eight built-in themes only.
Does a theme change the colours my commands print? No. Command output keeps the colours your tools print.