Dark mode colors¶

Dark mode colors define the “night personality” of your vault. In version 3, they benefit from the same OKLCH-based color system as Light mode, with palettes and accents specifically tuned for dark surfaces.

The settings mirror the Light mode options, but with one important capability : you can let the General palette follow your Light-mode choice or you can choose different palette that “sticks”, independant from your Light-mode palette.

New in version 3¶

Version 3 refines the Dark palettes, improves their internal balance, and adds new palette families.

Some Dark palettes are designed to stay closely related to their Light counterpart, while others can create a more distinctive night environment. In many cases, the palette logic is now calmer, clearer, and can be easily tuned.

General palette¶

The General palette controls the overall atmosphere when Obsidian is in Dark theme.

You have two main approaches:

Default < Light mode — the Dark palette is automatically derived from the current Light palette, keeping a coherent relationship between both modes.
A specific Dark palette — choose an explicit Dark palette when you want a different night mood, for example more contrast, cooler tones, warmer paper-like darkness, or a terminal-like atmosphere.

Some palettes are available only in Dark mode and must be selected explicitly. Once chosen, the Dark General palette defines a coordinated set of accent, text, backgrounds, and highlight colors for Dark mode.

For a thorough description of the different palettes, see Palettes

⭢ Samples

Accent color¶

The accent color in Dark mode works like in Light mode, but with values adapted to dark backgrounds.
For each Dark palette, you can choose:

Coordinated – an accent that fits the current Dark palette.
Alternative 1 and Alternative 2 – related colors with more or less contrast, for a slightly different mood.

Text color in Reading mode ¶

This option sets the text color for Reading mode.

Default – a color chosen to work well with the default Dark background of the current palette.
Other options – a range of “inks” and “terminal-like” colors that you can choose to suit your taste or to adapt to the background, if you have changed it.

If you change the Reading background, this default text color is not adjusted automatically. In that case, you may want to pick another ink color so that text remains comfortable to read. If you change this color, the Writing / Editing text color follows it (when set to Default), unless you customize it separately.

Note: most texts in the sidebars, including the file navigation, follow this choice.

⭢ Samples

For the full list of available colors and some inspiration, look ⭢ here

Notes background in Reading mode¶

This controls the background behind your notes in Reading mode.

You can:

keep the default dark background derived from the current (Dark) palette, or
choose one of the available paper backgrounds, three of them being black ones.

⭢ Samples

Dark paper backgrounds usually feel less “screen‑like” and can make long reading sessions at night more comfortable.

Paper background also in Live Preview¶

If you have chosen a paper background for Reading mode, this toggle controls whether the chosen paper background is also used in Live Preview.

ON – Reading and Live Preview share the same paper background, which gives a unified “dark notebook” feeling.
OFF – Live Preview keeps a plain editing background; the difference between Reading and Writing becomes more obvious.

As in Light mode, the pane still shows a small indicator in the upper‑right corner when you are in Writing/Editing mode.

Text color in Writing / Editing mode¶

This option sets the ink color while editing in Dark mode.

Default – follows the Reading text color chosen above.
Custom choices – the same palette of colors, if you want a distinct ink only for Writing.

This gives you an additional mean of knowing immediately wether a particular note is in Reading or in Editing mode.

For the full list of available colors and some inspiration, look ⭢ here

Notes background in Writing / Editing mode¶

Here you choose the background of the note while editing.

On Default, it uses a background coordinated with the Dark General palette. To emphasise the difference between Reading and Writing, you can:

choose a background that is slightly lighter or darker than the Reading background,
push towards a “console” feeling (almost‑black) or a softer, dark‑paper feeling for Editing only.

This affects both Live Preview and Source views.

Colored H1 to H5 headings¶

When this setting is ON, headings use colors coordinated with the current Accent color.

When it is OFF, headings stay neutral and rely on size, weight and rules only, for a clean, low‑noise hierarchy.

Text selection takes accent color¶

When this switch is OFF, selections use a neutral highlight suited to dark backgrounds, independent of the accent color.
When it is ON, text selections use a tinted version of the Dark accent color.

Choose the option that makes selections easy to spot without becoming distracting in low‑light conditions.

Highlighting color¶

This option controls the color used for explicit highlights (for example with ==highlighted text==) in Dark mode.

By default, highlight colors are tuned to remain readable over dark backgrounds while staying in character with the current Dark palette.
You can still pick between lighter or stronger variants and several hues if you want highlights to stand out more or to follow a color‑coding system.

Color of the pills inside the Properties panel¶

This setting defines how pills and tags look in Dark mode:

pills in the Properties panel,
inline tags inside your notes.

You can choose whether they:

follow the accent color,
match the main text color, or
use a theme‑tinted variant that blends more discreetly with the background.

If you work mainly in Dark mode with many tags and metadata, this setting strongly influences the perceived visual noise: do not hesitate to experiment a bit.