With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.

Zenburn

This is the The Official Zenburn Page

Zenburn is a low-contrast color scheme for Vim. It’s easy for your eyes and designed to keep you in the zone for long programming sessions.

Screenshot of Zenburn in normal contrast mode:

What’s the purpose of this page?

The Wikipedia page for Zenburn is officially deleted, therefore this page attempts to replace the wiki page as a nexus for Zenburn-related information. Unfortunately, unlike a wiki this page is not editable by everyone.

A page is easier to upkeep than a post, plus editing a page doesn’t mess up the RSS feeds (unlike editing a post which was posted a long time ago in the past). That’s why there is now this brand spanking new Official Page.

Latest version and background information

Zenburn.vim
Old skool official page
History of Zenburn
One day Zenburn was in Slashdot’s comments (and the server nearly melted)
Screenshot!
Page at vim.sf.net

Notes

To use Zenburn in GVim, simply copy the file to colors/ subdirectory under your Vim configuration folder (e.g. ~/.vim/colors or C:\vim\colors).

To use Zenburn in Vim, you must enable the 256-color mode for Vim. This can be done with e.g. export TERM=xterm-256color. You might also need to add set t_Co=256 into your .vimrc file, before loading the colorscheme. Note, that due to limitations of the 256-color mode the color scheme is not exactly like it appears in GVim, but very close nevertheless.

Have a look at Darmawan’s page for further information and screenshots.

List of known ports and derivatives

Zenburn for KDE konsole by Christoffer Sawicki. See also below for Konsole 2.0.
Daniel Brockman has a page with many adaptations. E.g. Emacs (!), XTerm, ion, ratpoison, etc.
Zenburn scheme ported to Visual Studio 2005 by Jeff Atwood
Jakub Piotr Cłapa Zenburnt his entire desktop!
Zenburn ported to Notepad++ by Dominykas Djačenka.
SubEthaEdit Zenburn by Henrik Bergius.
“Dark Zenburn Global Style” for Stylish browser plugin.
Zenburn for KDevelop/Kate by Lukasz “Lookanio” Purgal.
Zenburn for KDE3 by Kevin Geiss.
Putty colors by Steve T.
Marc Kerbiquet uses Zenburn in his Code Browser software.
Andrew Janke did a Zenburn-configuration file for Gnome Terminal. See also his comment below.
Jonathan Bonomo made a color scheme for sterjm (project page). You can download the file here.
Hisham made a Typo/CSS Zenburn theme.
Juhapekka Tolvanen made a Zenburn config for ctheme.
Zenburn for Konsole redux by Craig. It’s for Konsole 2.0 (KDE4). Apologies to Craig since I had somehow overlooked his link from the old page.
Zenburn Blogger template with syntax highlighting for code examples, by Elijahr.
“Zenburn-like color scheme with terminus/proggyclean fonts for terminals and emacs.” Cheers to Nick C for pointing it out.
Windows cmd.exe port (also for Powershell) by Twinside.
Adrian C has a whole bunch of Zenburn things, including a Zenburn theme for the Awesome WM – have a look at the simply excellent screenshots! You can read Adrian’s journal entry too.
Abchernin sent information about how to set up for EasyEclipse for Python 1.3.1.
Gianfranco did Zenburn for SciTE v1.78.

If you have made a new port, please drop a mail or comment to get it included here.

Thank you for enjoying “Just some alien fruit salad to keep you in the zone”!

74 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Can you please put the colour refence table as it were from the wikipedia entry? It was very useful…

Thanks & keep up the good work.
I wonder who the idiot that asked to have the entry deleted was…

J.H., I don’t know who it was originally – my guess is some random Wikipedia admin.

As for the deletion, the article was deleted based on lack of notability. After reading the Wikipedia rules, I have to admit I agreed with the verdict to delete, as the article unfortunately did not reach the high level Wikipedia demands. I didn’t like it, but judging the article and the rules objectionably that’s the way it had to go :(

As for the color table, I’ll sure try to add it… if only I can find it from somewhere! It seems that the wikipedia entry has just vanished, as if it never existed. Or I don’t know how to look.

I copied the contents of the table to a spread sheet on my machine before they took down the page. I’ve uploaded it to google docs. I’ll color it when I get the chance.

the link didn’t seem to work:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pKLGtBDTfcpZoRtJFr_eeAg&hl=en

Very good, C Betancourt! I shall make a task for myself to add the table here in the near future.

If you come up with the colors before I add the table, please put a comment here so then I’ll be sure to use the latest version.

You can get a “gnome-terminal” %gconf file here:

http://mavis.anu.edu.au/ubuntu/zenburn-gnome-terminal/%25gconf.xml

Just drop this in a directory called:

~/.gconf/apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/zenburn

and you are good to go. Note that I use a slightly transparent background for this one so perhaps you should increase the saturation of the background a bit but I like it this way!

I ported Zenburn for ctheme:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ctheme/

http://iki.fi/juhtolv/configs/ctheme/

I put Zenburn and Minimal (a TextMate color theme) together, made a similar one “MinimalZen” for EmEditor (http://www.EmEditor.com), you can find sreenshots in “http://picasaweb.google.com/toadloading/ScreenShots” and my EmEditor color theme in “http://www.box.net/shared/dnj42nqyow”

I found the StatusLine to close to the background color, so I set it the same as StatusLineNC. Humbly submitted as a possible patch if you agree.

*** .vim/colors/zenburn.vim.orig 2008-07-10 11:03:11.000000000 +1000 --- .vim/colors/zenburn.vim 2008-07-10 11:02:50.000000000 +1000 *************** *** 167,169 **** hi Statement ctermfg=187 ctermbg=234 cterm=none ! hi StatusLine ctermfg=237 ctermbg=186 hi StatusLineNC ctermfg=236 ctermbg=108 --- 167,169 ---- hi Statement ctermfg=187 ctermbg=234 cterm=none ! hi StatusLine ctermfg=236 ctermbg=186 hi StatusLineNC ctermfg=236 ctermbg=108

Hi Charlie!

I checked your patch, and agreed that the current StatusLine color was lousy. I took your patch in but had to edit it slightly, to be more in line with how GVim looks like.

Anyway, your name shall live forever in the Zenburn file itself, have a look at the latest version :) If you want your full name to be displayed, please send me a mail.

Thanks for spotting it!

Pardon my ignorance, but does this color scheme work with vim in a terminal or just gvim? I’ve tried using it in a terminal and it doesn’t look right.

Ydobon, it works with both gvim and vim – however, one must have 256 colors enabled in the terminal for the colors to look right.

This can be done with export TERM=xterm-256color, then launching vim. It works under Linux etc. but I’m not sure if that will work under a Windows prompt.

…and if it still doesn’t seem to work, check that the terminal emulator supports 256 colors in the first place :)

Thank you Ydobon, I’ll update this page with instructions how to enable the 256-color mode.

First and foremost: great work. This colorscheme is tight, and I’m loving it.

However, I was running into the trouble under iTerm in osX wherein if I changed my terminal type to anything other than “builtin_ansi”, my arrow keys would stop working within vim. Took me a while, but I finally found a solution, which I thought I should share with anyone else running into the same problem. It’s http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=550 , but it’s _NOT_ the actual tip, it’s the suggestion given in the first response there.

I know this isn’t strictly related to zenburn (so I won’t blame you if you kill this post), but manoman was it driving me crazy while I was trying to get your theme to work ;>

Again, great work. Now I need this ported as a theme for irssi.

Thanks Mediapathic! I’ve not noticed problems under Linux, but for the benefit of Mac OS X users, it’s good to have the information.

The chart that used to be available on wikipedia is now on deletionpedia

http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Zenburn

Thanks for your vigilance Christopher, I added Deletionpedia entry to the main text!

Hmm… too bad we need a Deletionpedia in the first place, but I’m really glad it exist. There’s gems among the deleted pages. (I’m not necessarily saying the Zenburn page is such ;) )

This is a great theme, thanks for making it. If anyone would be motivated enough to do a scite port, I’d be incredibly grateful.

Minor typo, but it bit me. Isn’t it
:set t_Co=256
instead of
:set T_co=256

Dave, you are correct. Thanks for spotting it, I’ve changed the text to have t_Co. Sorry for the trouble.

Hi! I’m having two issues.
First I’cant make in work under the urxvt terminal, I’ve setted TERM to xterm-256color but nothing. Default vim themes work fine, also zenburn works fine in xterm.

The other thing is the link to the emacs port is down, do you know some other source?

Thanks

Xuan, I think your urxvt might not support the 256-color mode. Have you tried to patch your urxvt? (More info here).

Brockman’s server is indeed down. Unfortunately I don’t know of any other sources, however I think the server error is transient, so let us wait a few days…

Argghh, version 7.9 too old to patch, I’ll upgrade to a newer and patch it.

Thanks Slinky, I’m looking forward to test this scheme, seems to be what I want.

Glad to see Zenburn has it’s spot on the web. I was the one who originally created the Zenburn Wikipedia article. It took quite a while making that table and adjusting every single color… I was bummed when they deleted it cause it wasn’t important to them.

Jake, thanks for doing that. Fortunately your hard work hasn’t gone down the drain, even though Wikipedia nuked the page. The page lives on at Deletionpedia – your table is also there.

Hi, I am grateful for Zenburn, it has helped a lot in reducing my eyestrain headaches. I made a Zenburn-based theme for Blogger, if anyone is interested. http://elijahr.blogspot.com/2008/12/zenburn-blogger-template-with-syntax.html

Thank you Elijahr! I added your theme to the list in this page.

I’m very happy to hear Zenburn helped again to reduce the eyestrain headache levels in this planet… The way I see it: less eyestrain = better environment = easier to concentrate = better productivity = better software = win!

Has anyone found a simple way to plug the zenburn palette into Eclipse (3.4 to be exact)?

I saw someone also created something for urxvt: http://dotfiles.org/~jbromley/.Xresources

Thank you Nick, I updated the list.

Hi, I’ve just adapted zenburn to the windows’ cmd.exe : http://twinside.free.fr/dotProject/?p=125

It also work with the powershell

Thank you Twinside, list is updated! Also, thanks to all the people who mailed me; now your contributions are in the list.

Here (7 KiB .ksf)’s a roughly equivalent Komodo Edit color scheme. I didn’t bother with the language-specific settings, YMMV with them.

I’ve made a few zenburn-inspired GTK themes:

http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Zenburn+GTK?content=100628
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Xfce-zenburn?content=105206
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Clearlooks+Zenburn?content=103035

plus an Openbox theme:

http://box-look.org/content/show.php/Zenburn?content=103045

I love your theme, but sometimes I want to see my console’s background color instead of the grey one zenburn uses. I added the following lines to my copy of zenburn:

if exists(”g:zenburn_use_console_bg”)
hi Normal ctermbg=NONE
hi statement ctermbg=NONE
hi todo ctermbg=NONE
endif

Those statements seem to be enough to let my normal background show through.

Here’s a zenburn-based mutt colorscheme that expects you to be using a 256 color terminal:

http://trovao.droplinegnome.org/stuff/dotmuttrc

And a mutt screenshot: http://trovao.droplinegnome.org/stuff/mutt-zenburnt.png

Can someone update the Notepad++ style? It doesn’t seem to include zenburn colours for html/css/xml :(

Oop, just found an updated version for Notepad++ !

http://gn.iohazard.net/wiki/GN/NotepadPlusPlusZenburn

I created an Epsilon plugin for zenburn. It can be found here:
http://www.tllilleh.com/Software/ZenburnPluginForEpsilon

Also, here is a table of the colorscheme, whose rows reflect the style that they describe: http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dfpbqnc7_15c6gkg97h&revision=_latest

Varreon, please have a look at SciTE port by Gianfranco.

Hi Jani,
Zenburn is one of my favorite vim colorschemes. I made a mod called Darkburn with brighter colors. You can see it at:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2648

I hope you’ll appreciate it.
Bye

Hi!

My “port” of Zenburn is now included into Notepad++ 5.5.

I created a Zenburn TweetDeck color scheme – BG1: 2F2F2F BG2: 3F3F3F INPUT: 284F28 TXT1: DCDCCC TXT2: F0DFAF

I can’t see end-of-line characters with “:set list” with this color scheme. I think NonText should be a different colour than the background. Perhaps #808080 or some such.

Zac, thanks for pointing that out, it is indeed a problem! (Although the high-contrast mode looks OK, i.e. let g:zenburn_high_Contrast=1, the normal mode is broken)

I’ll fix this shortly, latest at the coming weekend along with other updates…

Oh and also a big thank you to others who have commented here with their improvements and ports. I acknowledge and am grateful to each and every one of you, even if I am unable to respond to every comment :)

I’ve been discovering the joys of zenburn in vim, in awesome and wonder; has anybody made a vifm (vim file manager) zenburn colorscheme ?

Zenburn with Consolas for VS2008. I made this based on Jeff Atwood’s VS2005 settings. Feel free to copy/modify/redistribute.

Hello,

Thanks a lot for a very great theme.

I was setting it up on my emacs when I realized I wanted to use it as the baseline for all my UI-tweaks at the office, and as I couldn’t find a Google Chrome/Chromium version, I published one. You can follow my link, or go to its Chrome Extensions Gallery.

(You can delete my comment on your other post, I noticed this one only later).

Great theme dude. You’ve made my eyeballs considerably happier when I code for hours :)

I’ve hacked together a version for FlashBuilder/FlexBuilder in Eclipse that people can use:

http://www.noiseandheat.com/blog/2010/01/25/fb-zenburnish-a-zenburn-inspired-colour-scheme-for-flashbuilder-4/

Oh, and I also hacked together a version for syntax highlighted code in Wordpress using SyntaxHighlighter Evolved:

http://www.noiseandheat.com/blog/2010/01/29/sh-zenburnish-syntaxhighlighter-evolved-zenburn-stylee/

It’s a wee bit less faithful though because ny CSS skillz are weak.

Thank you Lo and Mnem! It’s nice to see new ports have popped up in the inbox on a lazy Sunday morning… :)

Here is zenburn dreamweaver code view theme http://bit.ly/cXc66A

Thank you Gerard!

This is great and awesome.

However, this ‘homepage’ for the scheme is not. I would like to encourage you to embed the screenshot into the top of the blog page. Colors > Text..

Qubodup, thanks for the comment. I added a screenshot picture, and hope it’s more awesome now.

To squeeze a bit more awesomeness into this page, I’ll try to make some more screenshots of GVim and the 256-color console (once I find the time!).

Here’s a rev 0.0.1 of an attempt at a dark background colour scheme for Eclipse: http://bit.ly/maroloccio_epf. Screenshot: http://bit.ly/maroloccio_epf_preview. Any feedback at all? (this is a big departure from what I normally use for Vim, which is: http://bit.ly/maroloccio_vim)

Great stuff. Practically my whole desktop is zenburned: AwesomeWM, Emacs, GTK, mutt, vim. Thanks to everyone who worked on these themes. My new site is also based on this. Thanks!

@Slinky great, thanks! A bigger image and no ugly gvim gui would be cooler, but what the heck ;) an image is an image.

@Abesto cool!

Qubodup, I’m working on it, but since I’m a lazy ass that was the best I could do with short notice :)

Here is my Zenburn color scheme for QtCreator : http://mgep.ath.cx/zenburn.xml

Maybe some improvments to do, but it’s a fairly good start ;)

Since it looks like Marc’s zenburn for Qt Creator got taken offline, here’s what I came up with based on that deletionpedia link:

http://pastie.org/955212

Sorry, it’s back online.

Just to let you know that I moved my mutt colorscheme to http://bitbucket.org/trovao/configs/src/tip/mutt-zenburn/dotmuttrc – I also updated the screenshot – http://bitbucket.org/trovao/configs/src/tip/mutt-zenburn/screenshot.png#

The colour table from the old Wikipedia page can be found at archive.org:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080413012358/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenburn

Good find, thanks Phil!

I’ve been lazy and not done the zenburned Zenburn-page colors. So much to do, so little time. But soon (please refrain from holding breath though)

Studio Styles has ZenBurn for Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010: http://studiostyles.info/schemes/zenburn-2010

Zenburn style for netbeans PHP, CSS, HTML, JS AND Java.
http://ideea.idc-lab.lv/nb.zip

Hello,

I have created an Eclipse PDT color scheme using zenburn color palette.
Check it out:
http://github.com/moleculezz/eclipse-zenburn

Good work, thank you Sean, Vladislav and Moleculezz. It made my day again :)

@moleculezz : thank you so much for this.

Vladislav, finally :) thanks so much for this~!

I’ve updated it a little :) u can download it again.

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Personal weblog of Jani Nurminen. Contains ideas, links, my creations, about me, and so on.

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