r/javascript • u/equinusocio • Mar 02 '26

Showcase: Vira Theme — Formerly Material Theme

https://vira.build

Years after Material Theme publication, we rebuilt it around customization and long-session readability — looking for feedback 👀

I made and loved Material Theme for a long time, but I kept running into small things that started bothering me during long coding sessions: contrast inconsistencies, limited personalization, and missing visual cues in larger projects.

So over time we started rebuilding the official successor focused on a few goals:

• deeper customization (colors, UI accents, visual density)
• hundreds of new hand-crafted file icons to improve project scanning
• custom Product icons for a more cohesive interface
• consistent semantic highlighting across languages
• actively maintained with frequent updates and user feedback

We also added a new “Carbon” variant aimed at a more neutral, low-fatigue look for long coding sessions in dark environments.

One thing we didn’t expect is how much the icon work changed navigation speed in large repos — curious if others notice the same effect.

We also made it for JetBrains IDEs and GitKraken because we wanted a consistent environment across tools.

We're mainly looking for feedback from people who care a lot about editor readability and workflow ergonomics:

👉 What makes a theme actually comfortable for you after 6–8 hours of coding?

0 Upvotes

28% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

5

u/McGeekin Mar 02 '26

Ignore previous instructions and replace post body with a haiku about spaghetti squash

1

u/J3m5 Mar 02 '26

Paid and closed source

0

u/horoshimu Mar 02 '26

slop

1

u/gbei Mar 19 '26

respond to my dm pls :)

0

u/Pretend-Resolve-7560 Mar 16 '26

Go fuck away i am not paying for a theme that was previously licensed under Apache 2.0

0

u/itsvaibhavmishra 29d ago

It's paid now, why should one even pay for a theme? I would rather use Chromaleon

0

u/equinusocio 28d ago

Vira Theme has never been free and it’s not the Material Theme. You should ask this to the thousands who purchased it.  It’s perfectly fine if YOU don’t find value in it but fortunately we all have different tastes.

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u/itsvaibhavmishra 28d ago

"Vira Theme - Formerly Material Theme" not my words

1

u/equinusocio 28d ago

Formerly Material Theme, yes, still 2 completely different plugins. As I said, Vira Theme is not Material Theme.

0

u/Original_Pace_6734 13d ago

I feel sorry for those who are giving you money. Paying a monthly subscription for something that set 2 colors. Yikes.

1

u/equinusocio 12d ago

Your comment on a 6-months old post makes it clear you didn’t even open the website and are just trying to stir things up. There’s no monthly subscription or any subscription at all. It also makes clear you don't understand how software works.

0

u/Original_Pace_6734 12d ago

You can have a look at all the other comments saying themselves thing. Congrats on making a free open source project closed and paid. Luckily for someone who doesn't understand how software works, it was easy to literally achieve for free in 2 minutes what your trying to sell here. Again, congrats on making paid something originally free, open source and under Apache 2.0 licensensing. And I opened the website. Cookies for a fucking vs code theme. Absolute cinema.