Contrast is very low

[marcinjahn]

Hello,
I just installed Ayu and I noticed that actual theme looks a bit different than the screenshots shown in Extensions of VS Code.
Here's my screen:

FOr exmaple, look at the icons on the left-panel of VS Code. They are barely visible, while on the extension's official screenshots they have better contrast.
Is something wrong wit my setup? I tried reinstalling the extension, but nothing changed.

[edwardloveall]

@Loreno10 I've had this same issue. Thanks for reporting it. Unless we both have bad setups, it seems like the screenshots are definitely a mismatch. If I had to guess, I think it would be this PR that changed it: #60

[marcinjahn]

@edwardloveall Yes, I think you're right. Honestly I don't know how they accepted this into main branch. I understand that editor should focus on the code the most, but right now it's done not right. I hope it'll be changed.

[edwardloveall]

@Loreno10 I hope so too. Worst case, it can always be forked and changed back 🙂

In the end, it's free software that someone else is maintaining, so they can make the tradeoffs they want to make. It's still a lovely looking theme.

[edwardloveall]

Another thing that I just thought of is that macOS Mojave disables font smoothing (subpixel antialiasing). I recently upgraded to it and it's making a lot of fonts harder to read. I just disabled it and here's what my theme looks like now:

Much more readable in my opinion.

You could try changing that setting (and logging out/in) to see if it makes a difference:

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO

[dempfi]

Hey @edwardloveall and @Loreno10. I'm sorry you guys had to suffer. However, we did quite a lot of improvements for the contrast. Do you guys still feel that contrast is off?

[edwardloveall]

It's certainly better for me! Thanks for the updates!

[kinghat]

maybe its just me but i feel like the side bar icons, explorer file name text, window tab text and the breadcrumb texts are hard to see. basically all the text non editor text. my monitors probably arent helping either:

[tamj0rd2]

I also have some problems with the contrast to the point where I can't use the theme anymore. I might fork it and play around with it for a bit.

[thomasbrus]

You can override the theme colors in settings.json like below. Should be a lot better already 👍

  "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "[Ayu Mirage]": {
      "dropdown.foreground": "#a1acc0",
      "foreground": "#a1acc0",
      "list.inactiveSelectionForeground": "#a1acc0",
      "panelTitle.inactiveForeground": "#a1acc0",
      "peekViewResult.fileForeground": "#a1acc0",
      "peekViewTitleDescription.foreground": "#a1acc0",
      "peekViewTitleLabel.foreground": "#a1acc0",
      "sideBarSectionHeader.foreground": "#a1acc0",
      "statusBar.foreground": "#a1acc0",
      "tab.inactiveForeground": "#a1acc0",
      "tab.unfocusedActiveBorder": "#a1acc0",
      "tab.unfocusedActiveForeground": "#a1acc0",
      "tab.unfocusedInactiveForeground": "#a1acc0",
      "titleBar.inactiveForeground": "#a1acc0",
      "activityBar.foreground": "#a1acc0",
      "list.focusBackground": "#000",
      "list.hoverBackground": "#000",
      "list.activeSelectionBackground": "#000",
      "editorSuggestWidget.selectedBackground": "#000",
      "selection.background": "#a1acc0",
    }
  },

[tamj0rd2]

Thanks, that's a huge improvement! I've also added this line for git ignored files:

"gitDecoration.ignoredResourceForeground": "#5d6370"

[dbofmmbt]

Hello! I agree about the contrast, especially on Ayu Dark. Currently, the text which is not inside the editor is a bit hard to read. I made some color customizations (as suggested above) and it's really nice now. In my case, the color 586173 worked very well.

[dempfi]

Another bunch of updates to contrast landed in v1. Hope you like it guys