I’ve been trying to make the theme and setup for the visuals on my Scrivener 3 as pleasing as possible, but I’ve ended on a slightly modified version of the Dark mode and I can’t wrap my brain around creating visually pleasing themes for my fantasy novel.
While researching more about Scrivener I happened upon Abbie from WritersLifeWednesdays on Youtube and one of the themes she created blew me away. But as it was on mac, there is no way to download and integrate it into my scrivener.
Antoni, are you able to have anything on modifying those parameters which are at present only within some kind of compiled code?
I’m not at all confident this is in any sensible way possible, so don’t exercise yourself, please.
But having fought with just getting a dark theme chosen again where most things show visibly, never all, one may really hope for the folks at L&L to find the time, or a miracle
I just also found some bugs on the wide styles-to-defaults alluvial plains across which lies iOS Scrivener, so I can well understand why they haven’t yet…
I’ve had a blast. I realize I cannot change everything, but I think I’ve come a good distance towards the goal. Calling it a day now. I’ll post a screenshot shortly. Here it is:
In your preferences file, you have a backup path defined that is unique to your username. This will cause an error attempting to close or save if those actions are trying to create a backup. You may want to examine the .prefs files from Midnight and see if they have trimmed out any settings that didn’t directly deal with theme-related changes, and if so, do the same.
Otherwise, great theme!
The fix is to go into Options and set the backup settings back to what they were previously.
Hey @AmberV I wish you hadn’t moved this – I specifically posted it as a followup in the theme thread because that’s where I downloaded the theme from, followed the install directions, and immediately got the error message and had to investigate and figure out what was going on.
My intention was to make sure that other folks who want to download the theme know ahead of time that .prefs file is going to overwrite all of their preferences, and that they need to be aware of the issue and update (at a minimum) their backup settings, to avoid a bunch of complaints.
Oh sorry, there was a lack of communication. I contacted the author directly, and the original theme file has been fixed, so the problem itself should no longer be an issue. The problem is that the settings export used was including all settings instead of theme settings. If you export just the theme options then the problem you found will not happen because the backup path, indeed all paths, will be stripped from the .prefs file.
We’re also fixing a bug with the theme options export that wasn’t blacklisting enough data, but that has been fixed manually in the download for now.
(I am glad I saved all my settings before importing the new theme. I actually liked my previous font choices, so reverting back was super easy, but this should help others.)
Yeah, it’s all still a little bit too confusing I think, with the different commands and such. We definitely need to streamline all of this a bit more. I like how on the Mac, when you save a theme you can choose whether to exclude fonts for example, and then provide two different files for those that like their fonts no matter the colour swaps.
Me, I keep my settings backed up! I’ve put way too much time into those tihngs to lose them in a reinstall or whatever.
The theme could never be downloaded from the Scrivener 3 Themes (Windows) post, because it links to this thread. This was the only place the download link existed.
I hope all issues are solved now. Glad you saved your prefs. Maybe it’s a good idea to add that step to the Readme file. Actually, I just did.
FYI, for Antonios’s dark forest theme, I ignored the .prefs file and only imported the .scrtheme file. That seemed to work fine.
Preferences management is an interesting topic.
My normal ‘base options’ .prefs backup is based on the default theme. If I decide to tweak something that should apply to all themes, say change my toolbar icons, I set Scriv to the default theme, make my change, take a new rev of my .prefs backup, then set my theme back to whatever I’m in the mood for. (I never use the default theme these days.)
I only use (load from) the .prefs backup if I need to uninstall/reinstall Scrivener.
I have a separate .scrtheme backup for each of my customized themes. When I want to move to another theme, I load the relevant .scrtheme backup and off I go.
@AmberV Are these the intended uses of the .scrtheme and .prefs files? Any tips for improving this process?
Yes, I think for most things the best approach is to reset your core options, then apply the theme (whether that is stock or one you’ve messed with a bit). I don’t bother with keeping my backup .prefs file default, I just use those two steps. I have to do that more often than most might, since often I need to test things under default conditions—and my setup is far from default.
The theme options .prefs file is a little confusing to me. I guess the option is there if you like dark mode widgets, say, and wish to have a few variations of it for the interior colour settings. I haven’t played with it too much to be honest.
Oh, I had to remove the original Background file, because it was way too large to include. You can find it here: 
Actually, I just did.