chameleon.nvim

Theme switcher for neovim

---

🚧 CAUTION 🚧

This is my first plugin for anything, ever! It's also my first try at Lua. You have been warned.

Features

• save/load your last theme selection
• telescope.nvim integration

Wishlist

• theme preview on 'hover'

Setup

The setup is admittedly a little bit involved.

• Install the themes of your choice
  • if your plugin manager has a lazy/ordering feature, make sure to assign a high priority to each of your theme plugins. Each theme has to be loaded inside neovim before chameleon can get to work.
• Setup chameleon as a telescope.nvim extension

{
    "nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim",
    dependencies = { "dimitriosvalodimos/chameleon.nvim" },
    lazy = false,
    config = function()
        local telescope = require("telescope")
        local chameleon = require("chameleon")
        telescope.setup({
            ..., -- rest of your telescope config
            extensions = {
                ..., -- other extensions
                chameleon = {
                    themes = {
                        "oxocarbon",
                        { name = "lighthaus" },
                        {
                            name = "onedark_deep",
                            colorscheme = "onedark",
                            before = [[
                                function()
                                    require("onedark").setup({ style = "deep" })
                                end
                            ]]
                        },
                        {
                            name = "ronny",
                            after = [[
                                function()
                                    require("ronny").setup()
                                end
                            ]]
                        }
                    },
                    save_path = "~/.config/nvim/lua/chameleon_save.lua",
                }
            }
        })
        telescope.load_extension("chameleon")
        chameleon.restore() -- load your last theme selection from a save-file
    end,
    keys = { { "<leader>ft", "<cmd>Telescope chameleon<cr>" } }
}

What's happening here?

Let's step through this snippet in reverse

• chameleon.restore() loads your last theme selection from the save_path file

• save_path specifies the path to a pre-existing savefile on your machine. I would recommend creating a .lua file inside your neovims lua directory.

• themes has alot going on:

  • at a minimum, you have to specify a singular string-field that is the name of the colorscheme. As long as the colorscheme is callable under that name using vim.cmd("colorscheme ...) and you find the name descriptive enough, you're good to go.
  • name is the displayed name inside the telescope.nvim selection menu
  • colorscheme is the actual value being used to set the theme through vim.cmd("colorscheme ...")
  • before is a stringified function that will be called before setting the selected theme
  • after is a stringified function that will be called after setting the selected theme

The current setup only works if lazy-loading is explicitly DISABLED for telescope.nvim, since we need chameleon to run on startup (getting the last used theme and applying it).

You could load chameleon seperatly and later add the same config to the telescope.setup.extensions table, thus getting the theme-restoration and keeping telescope lazy-loaded. It's a little more work, but here you go:

local chameleon_config = {
    themes = {
        "oxocarbon",
        { name = "lighthaus" },
        {
            name = "onedark_deep",
            colorscheme = "onedark",
            before = [[
                function()
                    require("onedark").setup({ style = "deep" })
                end
            ]]
        },
        {
            name = "ronny",
            after = [[
                function()
                    require("ronny").setup()
                end
            ]]
        }
    },
    save_path = "~/.config/nvim/lua/chameleon_save.lua",
}

require("lazy").setup({
    ... -- themes
    {
        "dimitriosvalodimos/chameleon.nvim",
        lazy = false,
        config = function()
            local chameleon = require("chameleon")
            chameleon.setup(chameleon_config)
            chameleon.restore()
        end
    },
    {
        "nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim",
        dependencies = { "dimitriosvalodimos/chameleon.nvim" },
        config = function()
            local telescope = require("telescope")
            telescope.setup({
                ...,
                extensions = {
                    ...,
                    chameleon = chameleon_config
                }
            })
            telescope.load_extension("chameleon")
        end,
        keys = { { "<leader>ft", "<cmd>Telescope chameleon<cr>" } }
    }
})

Credit

This plugin was heavily inspired by themery.nvim. If you're looking for a simple theme-switcher with a command interface, I would pick this over my plugin.

Why does this plugin exist then?

I created this plugin after I couldn't get the persistence feature inside themery to work on my machine. Later I tried "fixing" the persistence feature and failed. Thus I decided to create this plugin, to get persistent theme changes working and because I like using telescope.nvim when it comes to simple selection UIs.