Base16 MATLAB

This is a set of color schemes for the MATLAB desktop GUI and editor. The color scheme files are automatically generated with template files using the new Base16 builder.

See the Base16 repository for more information.

Each color scheme has two color assignments with subtle variations in their syntax highlighting. See Installation for instructions.

Example

Scheme default-dark:

See here for (many) additional screenshots.

Installation

To install Base16 MATLAB, download or clone the repository to any location of your choice (after applying a scheme you may optionally delete these Base16 MATLAB files; MATLAB will preserve the color scheme without the files).

First ensure the installation directory is on the MATLAB path by either

addpath('base16-matlab-master') % replace with directory containing apply_colors.m

or by changing the current directory through the MATLAB GUI or using

cd('base16-matlab-master')      % replace with directory containing apply_colors.m

To apply a particular Base16 color scheme, run the supplied apply_colors script from within MATLAB, passing the name of the scheme (no Base16 prefix).

⚠️ This will permanently change the colors of the MATLAB desktop and your scheme will be preserved upon restart. To restore the default colors you must use the MATLAB GUI (in HOME / Preferences).

apply_colors('default-dark')
apply_colors('default-light')

😰 The MATLAB files in colors/ cannot be run directly because their filenames contain hyphens. If you would like to use them manually you will need to rename them (e.g. in bash, for x in base16-*.m; do mv $x ${x//-/_};done) and set up the base16_opts structure manually.

Options and variants

Each Base16 MATLAB scheme currently supports two options:

• You can choose to suppress the highlighting of the editor line currently under the cursor by setting the second argument of apply_colors to 0. The default behavior (equivalent to an argument of 1) is to highlight the cursor line.
• Each scheme also has an alternate color assignment which may look better for some schemes. You can specify this using the third argument to apply_colors; 0 or 1 (default).

cd('base16-matlab-master')
apply_colors('default-dark', 0, 0)
%                             \  \_[ do use alternate ]
%                              \___[ do not highlight cursor line ]