Last Updated: February 25, 2016
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10.23K
· evannieuwburg

Change tab color in Sublime Text 2

I like Sublime Text 2. It’s lightweight, fast, pretty and does a lot for you. But it doesn’t show clearly which tab is actively selected. It’s darker than the rest and the outlines aren’t that visible. Here's how you change this.

This is the default look:
Picture
This is what we’ll get after applying the changes described below:
Picture
My colleague Tom Greuter sent me this tip, so kudos to him!
So here’s what you do:

  1. Inside of Sublime Text go to Preferences > Browse packages.
  2. Navigate to the User folder.
  3. There you create a file called Default.sublime-theme
  4. Open that file in Sublime Text and copy and paste the following JSON object:

[{"class": "tab_control", "attributes": ["selected", "file_medium_dark"],"tint_modifier": [255, 255, 255, 80]}]

And bazinga, there’s you freshly colored tab. No need to restart.

Alternatively, you could also install another theme, like the Soda theme:
https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/

2 Responses
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Thank you!!! Love this.

over 1 year ago ·

Thanks :) This only works for some themes, but it does not work for themes with a dark background. I have created three themes, from Eiffel (EiffelRed #ffaaaa, EiffelBlue #aaaaff, EiffelGreen #aaffaa), using different themes for different folders. I need exactly these colors. And with such bright colors, there seems to be no effect at all with your method. Is there another way? Sincerely, Thomas.

over 1 year ago ·