MATLAB Theme Extensions

MATLAB Theme Extensions enhance MATLAB’s built-in themes by enabling users to create, import, and share custom color schemes. This extension allows you to personalize your MATLAB environment and easily switch between different color schemes.

The project works by customizing colors on top of the existing MATLAB Themes (either Light or Dark).

Get Started

1. Download the project from MATLAB File Exchange or GitHub.
2. Extract the zipped file to any directory on your system.
3. Open MATLAB and navigate to the extracted project folder.
4. Run the scripts (such as import_scheme or export_scheme) from within that directory to use the project's features.

Features

1. Import custom color schemes from JSON files stored under the schemes folder (e.g., the Cobalt scheme):

import_scheme('schemes/cobalt.json');

2. Export your current color settings (including with the MATLAB Theme) to a JSON file:

export_scheme('exampleCustomColors.json');

3. Reset color settings by importing the default color schemes schemes/matlab-light.json and schemes/matlab-dark.json.

4. Validate custom scheme files:

validateJsonFile('pathtofile/customScheme.json');

Scheme File Structure

Scheme files are JSON documents that must include a DesktopTheme field and follow the structure of the provided template.json in this project. Customizable fields include:

• Background Color
• Text Color
• MATLAB Syntax Highlighting Colors
• Output Colors
• Programming Tools
• Syntax Highlighting for other languages such as C, Java, HTML, etc.
• Current Line Highlight
• Right-hand Text limit line
• Boolean fields to enable or disable specific customizations

The fields in the JSON file are inspired by MATLAB's Settings panel (previously Preference Panel), see MATLAB Toolstrip → Home → Settings

MathWorks Products (https://www.mathworks.com)

MATLAB R2025a or newer

License

See LICENSE.

Contributing

If you have suggestions for color schemes or improvements, please create an issue or pull request. See CONTRIBUTING.

Community Support

MATLAB Central

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