3.3 Differences between loading and enabling

The reason we recommend load-theme instead of the other option of enable-theme is that the former does a kind of “reset” on the face specs. It quite literally loads (or reloads) the theme. Whereas the enable-theme function simply puts an already loaded theme to the top of the list of enabled items, reusing whatever state was last loaded.

As such, load-theme reads all customizations that may happen during any given Emacs session: even after the initial setup of a theme. Examples are calls to custom-set-faces, as well as new values assigned to the options the Modus themes provide (Customization Options).

Our tests show that enable-theme does not read such variables anew, so it might appear to the unsuspecting user that the themes are somehow broken whenever they try to assign a new value to a customization option or some face.

This “reset” that load-theme brings about does, however, come at the cost of being somewhat slower than enable-theme. Users who have a stable setup and who seldom update their variables during a given Emacs session, are better off using something like this:

(require 'modus-themes)
;; Activate your desired themes here
(load-theme 'modus-operandi t t)
(load-theme 'modus-vivendi t t)
;; Enable the preferred one
(enable-theme 'modus-operandi)

Toggle themes without reloading them.

Sample configuration with and without use-package.

With the above granted, other sections of the manual discuss how to configure custom faces, where load-theme is expected, though enable-theme could still apply in stable setups:

Use theme colors in code with modus-themes-with-colors.

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