How do I change the Console colour of Arduino IDE?

Question

Leading on from the question Can I change font Color and/or Type for IDE 1.5.6r2?, in 1.6.0, or 1.6.1¹ it does not seem to be possible to change console.color or console.error.color. To be precise, you can change the settings in the preferences.txt² file, but they appear to be ignored when the IDE is restarted. Have these become hard coded? I see from the preference.txt example file that

# Some colors have been hardcoded into the source in app/ in order to ensure
# consistency with the images distributed and stored with the application.
# They have been commented out below so that users who install an old
# version of the software will not get incorrect colors left-over from this
# config file.

However, the settings to which I refer are not commented out, and so would led me to believe that they can be changed. Orange text on black is just horrific to read.

For example:

console.error.color=#FFF000
console.color=#FFCCCC

but I still get white/orange(red?) text for the output and error messages respectively.

I am making the edits while the Arduino IDE is not running.

---

¹ In 1.6.3 the ignored console.color etc. lines appear to have been removed from the preferences.txt file.

² C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Arduino15\preferences.txt

Answer 1

It turns out that the theme.txt configuration file is not located alongside the preferences.txt file, but alongside/under the Arduino application's .jar files. Thus, for the current version (1.6.3):

• on OS X, .../Arduino-1.6.3.app/Contents/Java/lib/theme/theme.txt
• on Win7, C:\Program Files\Arduino\lib\theme\theme.txt
• on Linux, .../arduino-1.6.3/lib/theme/theme.txt
• on Windows 10, when installed as an App, C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\ArduinoLLC.ArduinoIDE_1.8.10.0_x86__mdqgnx93n4wtt\lib\theme\theme.txt, however it does not seem possible to edit it - it can be opened in notepad++ but a save fails.

See an associated Github issue, IDE Background and print color options needed, for a little more discussion.

• Greenonline: Thanks for that. BTW, the Windows path is C:\Program Files\Arduino\lib\theme\theme.txt. It does beg the question why are the console.error and console.color lines in the preferences.txt file if they are ignored. The Arduino IDE truly is a shockingly terrible piece of software. However, having said that, I notice that in version 1.6.3 the lines appear to have been removed.
• Norman Gray: If you've put those lines in preferences.txt (as I did), then they'll still be there after the IDE has read and re-dumped the properties, even though the IDE ignores them. Myself, I don't much like the IDE editor, so I use an external editor (setting the appropriate preference), and just use the IDE to compile and upload – for that, for me, it works well enough. Anyone out there who can add the path to the theme file under Linux?
• Greenonline: I've added the Windows and Linux paths to your answer. Hope you don't mind.
• Norman Gray: @Greenonline Looks great!

Answer 2

Download the Dark Theme of Jeff Thompson from Github: jeffThompson/DarkArduinoTheme

Jeff Thompson's - Dark Arduino Theme

Screenshot:

Screenshot of Jeff Thompson's - Dark Arduino Theme