1. Enable Auto Detect (Search in Settings: window.autoDetectColorScheme)
  2. Customize Color Themes (Search in Settings: workbench preferred color theme)

More Detail (Visual Studio Code Themes):

Auto switch based on OS color scheme Windows and macOS support light and dark color schemes. There is a setting, window.autoDetectColorScheme, that instructs VS Code to listen to changes to the OS's color scheme and switch to a matching theme accordingly.

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:

workbench.preferredLightColorTheme - defaults to "Default Light+" workbench.preferredDarkColorTheme - defaults to "Default Dark+" workbench.preferredHighContrastColorTheme - defaults to "Default High Contrast" workbench.preferredHighContrastLightColorTheme - defaults to "Default High Contrast Light"

Answer from JBallin on Stack Exchange
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com β€Ί en-us β€Ί visualstudio β€Ί ide β€Ί how-to-change-fonts-and-colors-in-visual-studio
Change fonts, colors, and themes in Visual Studio
January 13, 2026 - If you download themes from the Visual Studio Marketplace, restart your Visual Studio instance to view them. Then, go to Tools > Theme and confirm the list includes your newly installed themes. Select the desired theme to apply it.
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Visual Studio Code
code.visualstudio.com β€Ί docs β€Ί configure β€Ί themes
Themes
November 3, 2021 - For example, you can modify the icons for the views in the Activity Bar, or the icons in the title bar for changing the layout. Notice in the following image how the Activity Bar icons are updated when selecting a different Product Icon Theme.
Discussions

macos - How do I sync the Visual Studio Code (vscode) theme to use my OS light/dark color scheme? - Ask Different
MacOS now supports both "Light" and "Dark" mode (found in "System Preferences", "General", "Appearance"). How can I make VS Code automatically chan... More on apple.stackexchange.com
🌐 apple.stackexchange.com
February 12, 2020
How to edit default dark theme for Visual Studio Code? - Stack Overflow
Maybe this is obvious to others, ... /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/extensions/theme-defaults 2021-02-23T02:51:08.397Z+00:00 ... As far as the themes, VS Code is every bit as editable as Sublime. You can edit any of the default themes that come with VS code. You just have to know where to find the theme files. Side note: I love the Monokai theme. However, all I wanted to change about it was ... More on stackoverflow.com
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visual studio 2017 - How to edit (customize) Color Themes in VS2017 Preview - Stack Overflow
Install the plugin for Visual Studio 2017. Editing and saving themes is problematic, as pointed out by @RepoMan. The following work around allows you to edit a theme and save it: ... Save the changes, e.g. More on stackoverflow.com
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how to change code theme in visual studio 2026 insiders
Tools β†’ Options β†’ Environment β†’ Visual Experience β†’ Editor Appearance Change this to "Match Theme" More on reddit.com
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September 20, 2025
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Reddit
reddit.com β€Ί r/csharp β€Ί change visual studio 2019 color theme
r/csharp on Reddit: Change Visual Studio 2019 color theme
March 26, 2021 -

Hi everyone, I hope this is the correct place to ask this question :)

When I open a .cs file inside Visual Studio Code it shows it using the following syntax color:

I like this a lot more than the default syntax color that Visual Studio Community uses. Is there any way I would be able to use the same syntax color inside VS Community? Using themes perhaps.

Thanks for any help :)

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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com β€Ί en-us β€Ί visualstudio β€Ί ide β€Ί personalizing-the-visual-studio-ide
Customize & save your personal Visual Studio IDE settings - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn
2 weeks ago - You can change the color theme between Dark, Light, and other colors. Visual Studio includes color themes such as Cool Breeze, Spicy Red, Bubblegum, and more. For a visual preview of all available themes, see Visual Studio color themes. If you enter theme in the search box, you can quickly set the theme to your preferred color.
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com β€Ί en-us β€Ί visualstudio β€Ί ide β€Ί visual-studio-color-themes
Visual Studio Color Themes - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn
2 weeks ago - In addition to Light or Dark, you can also try the Extra Contrast options (Light Extra Contrast or Dark Extra Constrast) which can improve text contrast in the editor. ... Select Tools > Options from the menu bar. Expand All Settings > Environment ...
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com β€Ί en-us β€Ί visualstudio β€Ί extensibility β€Ί migration β€Ί modernize-theme-colors
Modernize Visual Studio theme colors - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn
November 20, 2025 - Learn how to migrate Visual Studio themes from the legacy token-based system to the new streamlined color system introduced in Visual Studio 2026.
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com β€Ί en-us β€Ί visualstudio β€Ί extensibility β€Ί ux-guidelines β€Ί colors-and-styling-for-visual-studio
Colors and Styling for Visual Studio - Visual Studio (Windows) | Microsoft Learn
July 30, 2025 - Customizable UI components are found in the Fonts and Colors section of the Tools > Options dialog, where users can choose to change the foreground color, background color, or both.
Find elsewhere
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Medium
juliushuck.medium.com β€Ί custom-themes-in-visual-studio-842a3c641d6
Custom Themes in Visual Studio. Short instructions on how to change the… | by Julius Huck | Medium
March 4, 2020 - There are 4 themes built-in in Visual Studio (Light, Dark, Blue, Blue (Extra Contrast)). You can change the theme under Tools > Options > Environment-General.
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Visual Studio Code
code.visualstudio.com β€Ί docs β€Ί introvideos β€Ί configure
Personalize Visual Studio Code
November 3, 2021 - Change your File Icon Theme. Extensions in Visual Studio Code - Add features to VS Code through Extensions.
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Visual Studio Marketplace
marketplace.visualstudio.com β€Ί items
Visual Studio Color Theme Designer 2022 - Visual Studio Marketplace
October 20, 2022 - Extension for Visual Studio - Allows users to create and edit Visual Studio themes. Themes can customize colors used for menus, toolbars, tabs, titlebars, the text editor, and other environment colors.
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com β€Ί en-us β€Ί shows β€Ί vstips β€Ί visual-studio-tip-creating-changing-themes-in-visual-studio
Visual Studio Tip: Creating and changing themes in Visual Studio | Microsoft Learn
October 14, 2015 - In this video not only will I show you how to change your theme, but I will also show you how to use the Visual Studio Color Theme Editor to create your own themes. You can also check out some of the color schemes for the code editor window others have created and you can re-use at studio styles.
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GitHub
microsoft.github.io β€Ί vscode-essentials β€Ί en β€Ί 03-customization.html
Customize your editor Β· Visual Studio Code - The Essentials
However, it is possible to choose a different theme for your projects by creating a specific configuration file for the workspace, as we will see later. If you want to change one or more colors of the current theme, you can do so by changing the settings.json file of your user preferences.
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VS Code Themes
vscodethemes.com
VS Code Themes
Search themes for Visual Studio Code
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Educative
educative.io β€Ί answers β€Ί how-to-change-visual-studio-code-theme
How to change Visual Studio Code theme
The default color theme in VS Code is dark, but it can be customized according to individual preferences. To do so, navigate to Settings, select Themes, and choose a desired color theme from the available options.
Top answer
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The actual extension is now live for VS 2017. – vaindil

The official Visual Studio 2017 Color Theme Editor has arrived! I recommend using it instead of the hack below. Since the hacked version has some downsides that the official plugin does not have: it requires restarting visual studio when importing themes, plugin updates cause loosing themes, it doesn't define all colors that VS2017 uses.

Still, people might find use in hacking VSIX-files to get old Visual Studio plugins working. Therefore I leave the original answer below for reference.

Original answer: hacking plugin VSIX-file

With some hacking you CAN install the VS2015 Color Theme Editor or the VS2013 Color Theme Editor. I tried it and it more or less appears to work*.

  • download the linked VSIX-file and save it somewhere (e.g. in ColorThemeEditor.vsix);
  • VSIX-files are zip archives, open its contents for editing (or extract it and recompress it after editing) (for example with 7-Zip);
  • Edit extension.vsixmanifest;

    • there are two InstallationTargets (Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Pro" and Id="Microsoft.VisualStudion.IntegratedShell");
    • change the Version from "[14.0,15.0)" or "[12.0,13.0)" to respectively "[14.0,16.0)" or "[12.0,16.0)"
    • Only for the VS2013 Color Theme Editor, remove the Dependency with DisplayName="Visual Studio Product Updates" or change it to Version="12.0.20827.3,16.0))

      Visual studio 2017 is version 15.0. Square bracket means inclusive, whereas round bracket is exclusive.

  • Save extension.vsixmanifest and ColorThemeEditor.vsix;
  • Open ColorThemeEditor.vsix via the VSIXInstaller

    There might be some warnings about incompatible versions; but if all went well `Visual Studio 2017 is among the versions in which the plugin can be installed.

  • Install the plugin for Visual Studio 2017.

Editing and saving themes is problematic, as pointed out by @RepoMan. The following work around allows you to edit a theme and save it:

  • Edit the theme as you normally would
  • Save the changes, e.g. via the save and apply button
  • Visual Studio throws a null reference exception; ignore it.
  • Visual studio is not yet affected by the changes
  • Restart Visual Studio; the new instance should have your theme changes.

*There is a problem when importing and deleting imported themes: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager, Version=12.0.0.0. .... At first the imported theme can not be selected. After visual studio has been restarted you can select the imported theme.

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If you're referring to one of the 3 inbuilt themes, this link from Microsoft explains how. The relevant bit is below:

  1. On the menu bar, choose Tools, Options.
  2. In the options list, choose Environment, General.
  3. In the Color theme list, choose either the default Blue theme, Dark or Light.


If you're referring to the Color Theme Editor from Microsoft, 2013 is still the latest version (it's referenced in the link above, for 2017RC). Unfortinately it says on the same page, that you can only use it on Visual Studio Professional, Visual Studio Premium and Visual Studio Ultimate. I tried installing it on Visual Studio Community anyway, and it doesn't work.

Microsoft have also changed the format of the .vssettings file, so you can't manually import VS 2013 themes either.

I really hope you can change the theme in Visual Studio 2017 Community when it comes out.

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GitHub
github.com β€Ί bwya77 β€Ί vscode-dark-islands
GitHub - bwya77/vscode-dark-islands: VSCode theme based off the easemate IDE and Jetbrains islands theme Β· GitHub
3 weeks ago - All key visual properties are controlled by CSS custom properties defined at the top of the custom-ui-style.stylesheet in settings.json.
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