Appearance

Customize how Obsidian looks, including color scheme, fonts, themes, CSS snippets, zoom level, and the translucent window effect.

Obsidian gives you extensive control over its visual appearance. You can adjust everything from the color scheme and fonts to the window frame style and app icon. Open Settings → Appearance to access these options.

Color scheme

Obsidian ships with light and dark color schemes. The default setting adapts to your operating system’s mode automatically.

To change the color scheme:

1. Open Settings → Appearance.
2. Under Base color scheme, choose one of the following:

Option	Description
Adapt to system	Follows your OS light/dark mode setting.
Light	Always uses the light color scheme.
Dark	Always uses the dark color scheme.

Accent color

Select a custom accent color to personalize buttons, links, and highlights across the app. Use the color picker or the reset icon next to the Accent color setting.

Themes

Community themes change the complete visual style of Obsidian. Hundreds of themes are available directly inside the app.

1. Open the theme browser

   Go to Settings → Appearance → Themes and select Manage.

2. Choose a theme

   Browse the list. Select a theme to preview it, then select Install and use to apply it.

3. Revert to the default theme

   In the same browser, select Stop using this theme to return to Obsidian’s built-in look.

Update themes

Themes do not update automatically. To check for updates:

1. Go to Settings → Appearance → Current community themes.
2. Select Check for updates.
3. If updates are available, select Update all, or update individual themes from Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage.

Uninstall a theme

1. Go to Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage.
2. Select the theme, then select Uninstall.

Font settings

You can set three independent fonts in Settings → Appearance → Font:

Setting	Applies to
Interface font	All of Obsidian’s UI chrome (menus, sidebars, buttons).
Text font	The editing and reading views for your notes.
Monospace font	Code blocks, inline code, and frontmatter.

Enter a font name directly in each field, or leave it blank to use the system default.

Font size

Use the Font size slider to set the size in pixels for editing and reading views. You can also adjust font size on the fly:

• Windows/Linux: Ctrl+Scroll
• macOS: Cmd+Scroll or trackpad pinch-zoom

Zoom level

The Zoom level slider under Settings → Appearance → Advanced controls the overall scale of the entire app interface, separate from the text font size.

Window frame style

Under Settings → Appearance → Advanced → Window frame style, choose how the title bar of Obsidian windows looks:

Style	Description
Obsidian frame	Uses Obsidian’s custom window frame.
Native frame	Uses your OS’s default window frame.
Hidden frame	Hides the title bar completely.

A full restart is required for this change to take effect.

Translucent window

On macOS, you can make the Obsidian window translucent by enabling Translucent window under Settings → Appearance.

The Obsidian team removed translucency support on Windows in version 1.15.11 due to Electron removing the underlying feature.

Custom app icon

You can replace the Obsidian app icon with one of your own.

1. Open appearance settings

   Go to Settings → Appearance → Advanced → Custom app icon and select Choose.

2. Select an icon file

   Pick an icon from your filesystem. Accepted formats: .icns, .ico, .png, .svg.

3. Relaunch Obsidian

   Select Relaunch. Your new icon appears in the taskbar and dock after restart.

On Windows, you may need an extra step to update the taskbar icon. Right-click the Obsidian icon in the taskbar → right-click Obsidian → Properties → Change Icon, then locate your icon file and click OK. Restart Explorer or reboot to apply.

CSS snippets

For targeted style overrides without building a full theme, use CSS snippets. Manage snippets at Settings → Appearance → CSS snippets. See CSS snippets for full details.