Note for Windows and macOS users:

In IDEA versions >= 2020.3 the functionality of this plugin already exists out of the box.

Auto Dark Mode IDEA Plugin

Plugin that automatically switches the IDEA theme based on operating system settings. The plugin distinguishes between Light, Dark and High Contrast mode and the theme used for each mode can be customized. This plugin currently works for Windows and macOS.

Linux support is both limited and experimental. At the moment, Linux desktop environments that have an XSettings daemon running are supported. Gtk based desktop environments such as Gnome and Xfce ship with such a daemon out of the box. Users of minimalist window managers (such as i3) can choose to run a daemon shipped with Gnome (gsd-xsettings) or Xfce (xfsettingsd), among many choices.

By default, the following themes are used:

Building

./gradlew build
./gradlew buildPlugin

Architecture support

OS-dependent build components

When Gradle builds the plugin, it will only be able to compile native components for the operating system running the build. For example, macOS toolchains won't be available to someone who is compiling on Windows. For this reason, this plugin depends on artifacts built by a custom GitHub Actions workflow for the platforms which cannot be compiled in the given environment. A custom Gradle plugin downloads these artifacts during the build if necessary.

This step requires a GitHub access token

For Gradle to be able to retrieve the pre-built artifacts, you need to provide a personal access token using the githubAccessToken property in gradle.properties file. The access token only needs to have the permission to read repositories. Be sure to not commit your token.

Requirements for building

With exception to Linux, this plugin only requires that a standard C++ toolchain be installed when building on Windows (i.e. VisualCpp) and an Objective-C++ toolchain when building on macOS (i.e. Gcc or Clang).

At the moment, Linux requires a standard C++ toolchain like Gcc as well as the following packages.

libsigc++-2.0-dev libglibmm-2.4-dev libgtk-3-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev

Running

You can use the standard runIde task to run this plugin in a sandbox IDE. If you encounter errors like "Directory '[project-folder]/auto-dark-mode/base/build/idea-sandbox/plugins' specified for property 'pluginsDirectory' does not exist.", you might want to try running the task :auto-dark-mode-plugin:runIde instead.

If you experience other issues, you can try a clean environment by running the following command.

./gradlew clean build :auto-dark-mode-plugin:runIde