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Darek Kay
Solving web mysteries

Monokai Theme for IntelliJ IDEA

If you like this theme, check out my latest Tomorrow Evening theme! 🎉

When I first saw some Sublime Text screenshots I was impressed with the Monokai theme. It was originally designed in 2006 by Wimer Hazenberg and by now adopted by most text editors. I've searched for a similar color scheme for IntelliJ IDEA, and I've found multiple. However, they didn't look well compared to Sublime Text. Considering the amount of time software developers spend looking at their editor, I invested a lot of time to assemble the perfect theme for me.

Monokai theme

I've been using a dark theme since JetBrains released Darcula. Not because it's cool (though it is!) or because it's supposed to be better for the eyes. It's because I can process different colors and their meaning much faster. Use a dark theme for a week and switch back to understand what I mean.

My main goal was to highlight fundamental pieces of code without making it too distracting. After using and adjusting it for several months, it's time to finally publish it.

Installation

  1. Download my DK Monokai color scheme.
  2. "File""Import Settings" → Select the jar file.
  3. Restart IntelliJ.
  4. If the color scheme isn't applied automatically, go to "File""Settings""Editor""Color & Fonts" and select the right scheme.

Alternatively, you can download the settings as XML from GitHub and put it in your config/colors folder (restart required).

The color scheme supports many languages our of the box (no Ruby or Objective-C) and all JetBrains products (IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, PhpStorm, WebStorm, PyCharm, ...). There is no extra plugin needed. You can adjust the theme for any language support in the settings (see point 4.).

Finally, here's the color palette, in case you want to use it somewhere else:

#f92772 | 249, 39,  114
#fe9720 | 254, 151, 32 
#e6da74 | 230, 218, 116
#a7e22e | 167, 226, 46 
#66d9ee | 102, 217, 238
#ae81ff | 174, 129, 255
#808080 | 128, 128, 128
#74715e | 116, 113, 94 
#f6f6f6 | 246, 246, 246

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Monokai Theme for IntelliJ IDEA