- Enable Auto Detect (Search in Settings:
window.autoDetectColorScheme) - Customize Color Themes (Search in Settings:
workbench preferred color theme)
More Detail (Visual Studio Code Themes):
Answer from JBallin on Stack ExchangeAuto 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"
macos - How do I sync the Visual Studio Code (vscode) theme to use my OS light/dark color scheme? - Ask Different
How to edit default dark theme for Visual Studio Code? - Stack Overflow
visual studio 2017 - How to edit (customize) Color Themes in VS2017 Preview - Stack Overflow
how to change code theme in visual studio 2026 insiders
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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 :)
- Enable Auto Detect (Search in Settings:
window.autoDetectColorScheme) - 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"
Go to settings and search for theme -> Auto Detect Color Scheme

In VS code 'User Settings', you can edit visible colours using the following tags (this is a sample and there are much more tags):
"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
"list.inactiveSelectionBackground": "#C5DEF0",
"sideBar.background": "#F8F6F6",
"sideBar.foreground": "#000000",
"editor.background": "#FFFFFF",
"editor.foreground": "#000000",
"sideBarSectionHeader.background": "#CAC9C9",
"sideBarSectionHeader.foreground": "#000000",
"activityBar.border": "#FFFFFF",
"statusBar.background": "#102F97",
"scrollbarSlider.activeBackground": "#77D4CB",
"scrollbarSlider.hoverBackground": "#8CE6DA",
"badge.background": "#81CA91"
}
If you want to edit some C++ color tokens, use the following tag:
"editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
"numbers": "#2247EB",
"comments": "#6D929C",
"functions": "#0D7C28"
}
The file you are looking for is at,
Microsoft VS Code\resources\app\extensions\theme-defaults\themes
on Windows and search for filename dark_vs.json to locate it on any other system.
Update:
With new versions of VSCode you don't need to hunt for the settings file to customize the theme. Now you can customize your color theme with the workbench.colorCustomizations and editor.tokenColorCustomizations user settings. Documentation on the matter can be found here.
The actual extension is now live for VS 2017. β 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"andId="Microsoft.VisualStudion.IntegratedShell"); - change the
Versionfrom"[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
DependencywithDisplayName="Visual Studio Product Updates"or change it toVersion="12.0.20827.3,16.0))Visual studio 2017 is version 15.0. Square bracket means inclusive, whereas round bracket is exclusive.
- there are two
- Save
extension.vsixmanifestandColorThemeEditor.vsix; Open
ColorThemeEditor.vsixvia the VSIXInstallerThere 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.
If you're referring to one of the 3 inbuilt themes, this link from Microsoft explains how. The relevant bit is below:
- On the menu bar, choose Tools, Options.
- In the options list, choose Environment, General.
- 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.
please can anyone tell me how to change the code tab theme ? when i change the theme it only effects other stuff but not the actual code unlike visual studio 2022