Terminal: Automatic dark/light theme switching according to OS

[xmha97]

Hello,
Please add below feature:

• Automatic dark/light theme switching according to OS

In VSCode I can enable this feature using:

window.autoDetectColorScheme

Idea for Windows Terminal:

[j4james]

I think this is a duplicate of #1230.

[xmha97]

I think this is a duplicate of #1230.

No, My issue isn't about a bug. It is about a new feature.

[greg904]

If you set "theme" in the config file to "system", it's supposed to work, but right now I think it doesn't work because of that bug.

[DHowett]

So, this needs #1230 to work properly but it _isn’t_ 1230 alone. There’s also a request that the colorScheme be theme switchable :)

[j4james]

Ah, OK. I get it now. That's a neat idea. But do you not then need some way to specify your preferred light color scheme (or vice versa)? Or does it auto detect it based on the name?

[DHowett]

Yeah, that’s a good question :) Probably warrants at least a mini-spec. There’s also a request for focused/unfocused configuration, so I am a bit concerned about adding another dimension to the config matrix.

[cscorley]

The VS Code implementation in the example has up to four "colorScheme" specifications:

It is a bit verbose, but is much more flexible than requiring a scheme to define both a dark and a light (or high contrast!) variant. For example, I like Dracula at night but it does not define a light variant, so I use Quiet Light during the day.

[mateuszdrab]

Is there a reason why the terminal's title bar does not inherit the Windows accent color where all the other windows do?

Guess this is due to the fact that it's some custom code handling the title bar rendering due to tabs.

[TBBle]

Title Bar colouring is also what I think @DHowett was referring to earlier, probably #4862, which links through to https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/1332.

To throw another axis into the mix, I'd like to be able to use a different colour scheme when running as admin. I have PowerShell (Core) configured to use Solarised Light when elevated instead of Solarised Dark as I normally use.

Although after learning about it from this ticket, I set up VSCode to use Solarized Light/Dark per the OS theme, so maybe I should find a different way of reminding myself when I'm elevated.

Edit: To be clear, I'm talking about if the whole WT process is running elevated, not trying to mix this in with the 'elevated tabs' request. Currently PowerShell Core under conhost ends up ignoring my admin-based colour switch when it draws a cell with text input or Control-L, so if the switch was handled at the WT level and applied the WT colourschemes, it'd work better than it does now, I think.

[mateuszdrab]

You know what even be better? Running an elevated session within your existing terminal window 😄

That one might be difficult to achieve technically due to the various isolations at OS level when it comes to handing admin privileges. Perhaps recent optimisations in regards to console host redirections could make it possible though. It would however, be of great use to me as I normally need one elevated and one non elevated session of powershell.

[DHowett]

Yeah, let’s not pollute this request with the discussion of mixed elevation, which you can absolutely find a place for elsewhere in our issue tracker.

[ChristAlbert]

Isn't this a duplicate of #4066?

[zadjii-msft]

@ChristAlbert good find! It totally is. Thanks for digging that out of our backlog!

/dup #4066

[msftbot[bot]]

Hi! We've identified this issue as a duplicate of another one that already exists on this Issue Tracker. This specific instance is being closed in favor of tracking the concern over on the referenced thread. Thanks for your report!

[electronic-dk]

@zadjii-msft I thought #4066 spoke about the color profile specifically, while this ticket is about the terminal theme itself (dynamic change without having to restart the terminal). Are these 2 aspects planned to be implemented in scope of one ticket?

[zadjii-msft]

From the way I understand it:

• #1230 covers: "When I set the theme to system, the RequestedTheme of the Terminal should update when I change my system theme"
• #4066 is "I want to change color scheme based off the current RequestedTheme of the Terminal application"