To customize the themes that are used when a color scheme changes, you can set the preferred light, dark, and high contrast themes with the settings: There is a setting, toDetectColorScheme, that instructs VS Code to listen to changes to the OS's color scheme and switch to a matching theme accordingly. Windows and macOS support light and dark color schemes. You can search for themes in the Extensions view ( ⇧⌘X (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+X)) search box using the filter. If you find one you want to use, install it and restart VS Code and the new theme will be available. Many more themes have been uploaded to the VS Code Extension Marketplace by the community. There are several out-of-the-box color themes in VS Code for you to try.

To do so, set a theme in the Workspace settings. You can also configure a workspace specific theme. Tip: By default, the theme is stored in your user settings and applies globally to all workspaces. Specifies the color theme used in the workbench. The active color theme is stored in your user settings (keyboard shortcut ⌘, (Windows, Linux Ctrl+,)). Select the theme you want and press Enter.Use the cursor keys to preview the colors of the theme.You can also use the keyboard shortcut ⌘K ⌘T (Windows, Linux Ctrl+K Ctrl+T) to display the picker.( Code > Preferences > Color Theme on macOS). In VS Code, open the Color Theme picker with File > Preferences > Color Theme.Configure IntelliSense for cross-compilingĬolor themes let you modify the colors in Visual Studio Code's user interface to suit your preferences and work environment.Have fun! You can make your own themes as well and import/export them. Also, this is changing the colors of the IDE itself, not the text editor. Remember these are VS themes, not Windows themes, so they won't affect Windows colors. Once you've installed it (it's a VSIX - an extension to VS2010 - not an MSI, so don't be scared) there will be a new menu in VS called 'theme.' There's a free Visual Studio Color Theme Editor by Matthew Johnson that you can download and modify the VS IDE theme however you like. Folks feel strongly about their colors, like our friend above.

Just like Henry Ford said, 'You can have any color you want as long as it's black.' Seriously, though, you can change the colors if it makes you happy. An official facelift patch would be nice, if just the 2008 look was applied to 2010. Why did the default colour theme for VS 2010 have to be so hideously ugly? Why put all that work into making the most advanced IDE ever, and then present it with a look that screams 'we didn't care?'. Personally, I like the new Visual Studio 2010 IDE colors but I got this comment recently from a helpful reader:

Make visual studio dark theme