Editor's Note: Popular File 2018
This file was selected as MATLAB Central Pick of the Week
MATLAB Schemer makes it easy to change the color scheme (a.k.a. theme) of the MATLAB display and GUI.
You can use Schemer to import a predefined color scheme, transfer your color settings between installations, or create your own color scheme.
The MATLAB interface has customisable colours for displaying text and highlighting syntax, but no way to easily export these settings and share them with others users, or import them to other machines. In fact, the vast majority of users do not even know the colour settings can be customised at all. Furthermore, MATLAB ships with a light color scheme by default, so any user who wishes to use a dark theme must completely change all the colours. Designing an effective color scheme is not trivial, so it makes sense for users to simply import a pre-made color scheme instead of having to make one from scratch.
Schemer makes this easy. Color schemes can be imported by running `schemer_import` at the MATLAB command prompt, without needing any inputs. This will open a GUI to select the file to import the color scheme from.
Schemer comes with a collection of 11 color schemes to pick from:
- Cobalt
- Darkmate
- Dark Steel
- Matrix
- Monokai
- Oblivion
- Solarized Dark
- Solarized Light
- Tango
- Vibrant
- and the original, default MATLAB scheme, which can be restored as needed.
You can view samples of the color schemes here:
https://github.com/scottclowe/matlab-schemer/blob/master/schemes/README.md#matlab-schemes
If you find a bug in the code, please report it by creating an issue on GitHub:
https://github.com/scottclowe/matlab-schemer
If you want to share a color scheme/theme you have created, please issue a pull request to the daughter repository containing just the color schemes:
https://github.com/scottclowe/matlab-schemes
Scott Lowe (2019). MATLAB Schemer (https://www.github.com/scottclowe/matlab-schemer), GitHub. Retrieved .
1.4.0.0 | Updates to VRML/X3DV
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1.3.6.0 | Add Monokai theme. Minor changes to backup colour inheritance. |
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1.3.5.0 | Update Matrix, Dark Steel, and Solarized Light/Dark schemes. |
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1.3.4.0 | Update Tango and Matrix schemes |
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1.3.3.0 | Add links to color scheme screenshots. |
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1.3.2.0 | Update schemes documentation and sources list |
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1.3.1.0 | Updated logo to version 2. |
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1.3.0.0 | Fixed a bug (issue #9) reported by @LoGGoL.
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Inspired by: setupEmacsClassicColors, benhager/solarized-matlab
Create scripts with code, output, and formatted text in a single executable document.
Sebastian Rojas Gonzalez (view profile)
Lrene Izquierdo (view profile)
Thanks!
Marco Lo Cascio (view profile)
Srivatsa Megaravalli Subramanya (view profile)
Emery Stokes (view profile)
Wei Jiang (view profile)
jim chen (view profile)
bin lu (view profile)
Bryan H. (view profile)
Teodoro Bora (view profile)
Gabriel Pauka (view profile)
Marcel Goldschen-Ohm (view profile)
Until a native dark mode is available, this is an eye saver.
Scott Lowe (view profile)
@Peter Scott Changing the default background of a plot is outside the scope of this package. You can find the answer here: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/96816-how-do-i-change-the-default-background-color-of-all-figure-objects-created-in-matlab
For instance:
set(0, 'DefaultFigureColor', [1, .8, .8])
set(0, 'DefaultAxesColor', [.4, .6, .8])
Peter Scott (view profile)
How do i change the default background of a plot.
James Foster (view profile)
Scott Lowe (view profile)
Unfortunately, it is not possible to change the Toolbar color scheme of MATLAB on any OS.
Ward Ruelens (view profile)
Question: how to make the Toolbar color scheme follow the Schemer? I'm working on an Apple MacBook Air MacOs Mojave 10.14.6
Radix User (view profile)
Adam Mohd Khairuddin (view profile)
Haiyang Zhang (view profile)
NMTri (view profile)
shufu yuan (view profile)
Bernhard Westerhof (view profile)
Perfect. Color schemes should be a standard feature, but this is a great substitute.
Changyeob Shin (view profile)
John Johnson (view profile)
Vojtech Mankowski (view profile)
Samuel (view profile)
Khashayar Abryoghani (view profile)
M2ohamad (view profile)
amazing!
Joseph Transom (view profile)
Its a typical Redmond-fail (i.e, Microsoft's habit of pushing half-finished dreck), but on Windows folks will notice that none of the toolbars, menubars etc change to adapt to the broad theme.
That's on MSFT's third-decile coders, and is not the fault of the contributor: I have a dark Windows theme, and browser bars & menus all adapt, but JetBrains IDEs, Geany, MATLAB, and Office have the hated white/light-grey livery unless I specifically alter their characteristics.
the cyclist (view profile)
Vincent Bridier (view profile)
BoFly (view profile)
Marcin Paszek (view profile)
Edoardo Lisciandra (view profile)
Nicolò Faggioni (view profile)
bisraelsen (view profile)
works nicely
Ignacio (view profile)
Great submission. It made my Matlab much more comfortable to use.
Vlad-Marian Ivanciu (view profile)
Justin Heer (view profile)
my eyes said thanks
Ludovico Massaccesi (view profile)
xiongwei yong (view profile)
Axel Nilsson (view profile)
Pepelolo (view profile)
Jason (view profile)
Bálint Décsi (view profile)
For anyone who doesn't know how to import the themes, make sure first that the folder you unzipped is in your MATLAB path. You can add it to your path in Home>Set Path option.
Sascha Bilert (view profile)
Artur Szilágyi (view profile)
Paul Gesting (view profile)
Atif Anwer (view profile)
Leonel (view profile)
Excellent submission! Would it be possible to have an Atom-like theme?
Artur Mirowski (view profile)
Federico Arguissain (view profile)
Stephen Cobeldick (view profile)
@Kuo Yang: click the big blue "Download" button (top of the page). Unzip the file onto your MATLAB path (e.g. your current directory).
Suhas Chelian (view profile)
Slav Demin (view profile)
Kuo Yang (view profile)
I type schemer_import in the command prompt... not work at all... it shows undefined function or variable... could you please tell me what to do?
Matthew Millington (view profile)
Yuanlong Zhang (view profile)
Stephen Cobeldick (view profile)
If I could, I would give this ten stars.
LFAnt (view profile)
Raul Leon (view profile)
Chen Shang-Ying (view profile)
Rodrigo Chi (view profile)
does anyone knows how to install the themes?
spiesi (view profile)
Works perfect :D
spiesi (view profile)
Niravkumar Ambaliya (view profile)
Excellent Work. Works very well. Thanks.
Christoffer Boström (view profile)
Stephen Cobeldick (view profile)
Brilliant.
An illuminating submission which is a *must* for any regular MATLAB user.
Would be nice if it also included Zenburn, but the inbuilt schemes are thoughtfully selected.
Daniel Meer (view profile)
Hippo (view profile)
Tao LUO (view profile)
Alexey Salasyuk (view profile)
Pete Websdell (view profile)
Seth (view profile)
Great work on this, thanks.
Emiliano Rosso (view profile)
VERY GOOD THANKS !!!!!!!!!!!!
Menelaos Tasiou (view profile)
Roman Yermoshkin (view profile)
Perfectly simple tool and very efficient schemes
Zhongzheng Fu (view profile)
Andrea Zignoli (view profile)
Huge! Thanks!
Amir Reza Sadeghi (view profile)
Dan Gross (view profile)
Sergio Nicoli (view profile)
Many thanks from my tired eyes
Marco Lo Cascio (view profile)
ML (view profile)
Dennis Gardner (view profile)
Exactly what I wanted and easy to use.
BERKAY YUCEL (view profile)
That is great. Thank you!
Jayant Sharma (view profile)
Toan Le (view profile)
It's good to use, thanks for your contribution.
wbadry (view profile)
It is a wonderful tool. However, it doesn't apply the theme to live scrupt.
Van Minh Nguyen (view profile)
Myron Van Staden (view profile)
Very Nice YES Baby!
Julie Vinente (view profile)
Nice
Paul Dostert (view profile)
This broke "doc" on my MATLAB install. I got a "Dot indexing is not supported for variables of this type." each time I tried to run doc on a command, such as:
>>doc format
or
>>doc rand
Brian Isakov (view profile)
Juan García Martínez (view profile)
Facundo Ramon (view profile)
Tomonori Mizoe (view profile)
Marek Svoboda (view profile)
Claims to change the GUI color (the first sentence) but doesn't. Otherwise great!
Lavinius (view profile)
Vaggelis Michos (view profile)
Thanks!!!!!!!!!!
Miguel Valdes (view profile)
Amazing work!
Jens Johansson (view profile)
Nikesh Thammishetti (view profile)
Jyahway Dong (view profile)
Hirak Modi (view profile)
Aochen Xiao (view profile)
Thx!!! It's awesome!
Stephen Town (view profile)
Xuan Xiao (view profile)
Gustavo Ramirez (view profile)
Eric (view profile)
Seungjun Pi (view profile)
Awesome!! Thanks!
jmg488 (view profile)
Bradley Taylor (view profile)
Jeff Pankau (view profile)
Ivan (view profile)
Philippe Ganz (view profile)
Thanks a lot! Does exactly what it says and themes are very nice.
@Shams No need to install, just download, unpack and open in MATLAB by running schemer_import as stated in the above documentation ;)
junhong chen (view profile)
really useful for me!!!
sen ten (view profile)
Hello Guys
I'm new to MathLab.
I want to install this add-app but I do not know how to do it.
Thanks in advance
Mostafa Modirrousta (view profile)
Suvansh Kasliwal (view profile)
micheal audi (view profile)
Prashanth Nadukandi (view profile)
theblueeyeswhitedragon (view profile)
Raziel (view profile)
Thomas Plaisier (view profile)
Yang Lou (view profile)
Finally there is someone who made this! I've been manually changing the theme to dark for 5 years but just didn't have the time for making this automatic... Thank you for doing this!
Emerson Suguimoto (view profile)
Roelle Corregidor (view profile)
Sebastian Wolff (view profile)
Bogdan Udrea (view profile)
Daniella Ayala (view profile)
Heinrich Pieterse (view profile)
Andreas Berg (view profile)
Matthew Keaton (view profile)
Conner Herndon (view profile)
Chandra N (view profile)
Scott Lowe (view profile)
Hi Ngô Quang. 1. Download file. 2. Extract zip. 3. Open Matlab. 4. Navigate Matlab to the unzipped directory. 5. Run schemer_import. 6. In the dialogue box which appears, open the schemes folder. 7. Select a scheme from the list of .prf files in the schemes folder. 8. Click Open. 9. If you don't like this scheme and want to try another one or return to the default colours, repeat steps 5-9.
Ngô Quang (view profile)
how to use when i have download
Ander Biguri (view profile)
Tyler Cumby (view profile)
Duc Truong (view profile)
Thank you. This is cool.
Dirk Schuster (view profile)
Cheryl Sital (view profile)
Victor Hugo Souza (view profile)
Excelent module! Congratulations!
Arjun Roy (view profile)
Diogo Matos da Silva (view profile)
Tudor Popescu (view profile)
Zhengguang Zhao (view profile)
Marcin Lenarczyk (view profile)
Great thing! Thanks!
Francis Gagnon (view profile)
Changho Choi (view profile)
Where should I put this file to?
Matthew Thompson (view profile)
Alberto Lambertucci (view profile)
Ander Biguri (view profile)
While this certainly seems considerably more complicated: you think there is a way of also changing the colors of the scrollbar and other things that keep white after the schemmer is applied?
Martin Leduc (view profile)
adel mezaour (view profile)
Charles Wasserman (view profile)
Ankan Biswas (view profile)
rokP (view profile)
Jeremy Walker (view profile)
Yury Bulavin (view profile)
cui (view profile)
nice!
Ismael Xique (view profile)
Yaroslav (view profile)
Jedrzej Baranski (view profile)
Great idea, thank You!
Henry Hunt (view profile)
Good Stuff
JG (view profile)
Great tool, very refreshing. Would love to see more schemes.
Daniel Ruckser (view profile)
Bryce (view profile)
Eric Miller (view profile)
Baptiste P (view profile)
SajadDP (view profile)
Callum Gilmour (view profile)
Rupinder Judge (view profile)
Igor (view profile)
Alessandro Morettto (view profile)
Kerem Tuzcuoglu (view profile)
Carlos Franco (view profile)
Francis Gagnon (view profile)
Luke Osborn (view profile)
wei du (view profile)
Great!
John Peter Davalos (view profile)
Florian DURET (view profile)
Simply great. It was definitely missing in Matlab.
Muhamed Ali (view profile)
Gabor Papotti (view profile)
Amazing. Thank you!
Jenne H (view profile)
Juan R. Terven (view profile)
Awesome!
Ali Ramadhan (view profile)
Zachary Leasor (view profile)
Hussein Fadhel (view profile)
Niklas Ohlsson (view profile)
Niklas Ohlsson (view profile)
Nice!
Ahmed Elsadek (view profile)
Adil Sbai (view profile)
Nice job!
Spangler-Bickell (view profile)
FeedMeImATroll (view profile)
Wonderful, thanks mate!
ajay singh nehra (view profile)
Jianghao Wang (view profile)
useruser (view profile)
great tool, thank you!
Lijia Zhang (view profile)
Terry Jhon (view profile)
Good Job! Is there any way to change the grey color scheme of the matlab gui (borders, scrollbars, ribbon, etc).
Mendi Barel (view profile)
good job
Jannick Schreiner (view profile)
Alexander Andreychenko (view profile)
Was looking for that for so long!
grotman (view profile)
Fantastic. Thanks a lot
Yiyi Yan (view profile)
UNREAL
Frank ZOU (view profile)
Thanks a lot!
Alfonso (view profile)
Andrew X Stewart (view profile)
Will (view profile)
Fantastic, thank you!
Dimitris Floros (view profile)
Robert Waters (view profile)
Scott Lowe (view profile)
Hi Jake. Unfortunately at the moment it is not possible to change the colours of the borders, ribbon, etc, present in the GUI. It would indeed be nice if you could reskin the whole GUI, not just the innards of the content windows. The only suggestion I can make is if you would rather not see the Toolstrip ribbon at all you can minimise it and add some buttons to the Quick Access Toolbar to use them there instead.
Jake Shea (view profile)
Is there any way to change the grey color scheme of the matlab gui (borders, scrollbars, ribbon, etc). Would love them dark as well.
Alexandros Iliopoulos (view profile)
H. M. Villanueva López (view profile)
Lipeng Jiu (view profile)
Victoria Scholl (view profile)
Perfect!
Vlad Maximov (view profile)
Andre Goncalves (view profile)
Tim Hobbie (view profile)
Good work. Exactly what I was looking for.
Abhishek Badki (view profile)
Huy Do (view profile)
Awesome! Absolutely Awesome!
Nelson (view profile)
Fernando Gonzalez (view profile)
oss (view profile)
Anael (view profile)
Simply perfect!
Mathilde Granke (view profile)
ablenkmann (view profile)
Kal Vuppamandla (view profile)
Awesome, made some tweaks to monokai theme to suit to my taste and it is looking great, thanks a bunch!
Geun Lee (view profile)
Manolis Trypakis (view profile)
I tried it and it's really great! Very very helpful, very easy to use. I liked the Cobalt theme the most. The community's eyes thank you!
Manolis Trypakis (view profile)
Hooman (view profile)
Rob (view profile)
Works like a charm, thanks a lot!
BobE (view profile)
Eman Johnson (view profile)
Farhad Verahrami (view profile)
Fabio Assis (view profile)
Very very good! Thank you for this amazing work.
Jeremy (view profile)
Born2Die (view profile)
Robert See (view profile)
Brilliant, thank you Scott!
Mianzhi Wang (view profile)
Vincenzo Varano (view profile)
Daniel (view profile)
Juan (view profile)
deniz unal (view profile)
Pranav Jawale (view profile)
wonderful. love the cobalt theme.
Scott Lowe (view profile)
Hi, Initial Conditions. You can disable current line highlighting in the MATLAB Preferences within the Editor/Debugger > Display panel. To use Schemer to reset boolean settings (such as whether to highlight the current line) in addition to the colour settings, you can run schemer_import('schemes/default.prf', true).
Initial Conditions (view profile)
I've reverted back to default, but I have a strang issue: the line the cursor is on is now constantly highlighted, and I can't seem to get this unhighlighted (which is the default setting). Any ideas?
Robert Waters (view profile)
Having a darker theme is soooo much better and this script made changing effortless.
Thanks
Berkin Bilgic (view profile)
Pablo Iturralde (view profile)
Easy to use. Now I have a good way to bring my preferred Matlab color scheme with me to new computers!
Shahab J (view profile)
Arthur Dgn (view profile)
Pablo Iturralde (view profile)
Very easy to use, allowed me to share my color settings.
Michal Balcerek (view profile)
Daniel Zaldivar (view profile)
Rongjie (view profile)
Alexander (view profile)
Tanmay Rajpathak (view profile)
saras (view profile)
Jmpp (view profile)
Elmar Tarajan (view profile)
Great! Thank you! :)