What's new?

What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.13.0

This version is only available for the 2023.3 EAP, and only consists on being compatible with the latest EAP breaking changes.


What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.12.0

Yet another bug fix release.

Features

  • Add more color options to the File Colors settings

Fixes

What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.11.0

This version is another bug fix release, mostly focused on Windows and Linux issues.

Features

  • Linux/Windows: Rounded menus
  • Menu Separators: Make menu separators thinner and more subtle

Fixes

  • Linux: Fix the Colorize title bar being applied to the whole IDE
  • Shadows: Fix spacing making the notifications blend to each other
  • Menus: Fix menu item size being too small due to the last update

What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.10.0

New Feature: Animate Tool Windows

This release introduces a new feature: Animate Tool Windows. This feature allows you to animate the undocked tool windows when they are opening/closing.

Animated Tool Windows
Animated Tool Windows

It uses the registry feature behind the scenes, so it’s available in the free plans. However, it is disabled on Linux as the animation is not smooth on this platform.

Important: Since the animations only show for undocked tool windows, the plugin will ask you if you want to undock all currently opened tool windows. However, if you change your mind, an action “Dock” is available in the Material Theme Toolbar to dock back the tool windows.

New Theme: Material Space

Another highlight of this release is a new theme: Material Space.

This theme is a dark blue and purple theme reminiscent of the cosmic space. It is based off the theme used in the Apollo GraphQL website, but with Material colors.

Material Space
Material Space

Fixes

Last but not least, this release fixes a few older issues:

  • The Project Frame is now opaque, so that it doesn’t get affected by the background image.
  • The Left indent and Right indent of the Project Tree is now taking values from the registry when the checkbox is unchecked in the settings. It uses with the following algorithm:
    • If the plugin’s Custom Tree Indent setting is checked, the indent is taken from the plugin settings.
    • Next, if the Use smaller indents in trees setting is checked (in Settings > Appearance), it will set the right indent to 0.
    • Then, if the Registry value is set and not equal to -1, it will use that value for the left and tree indent.
    • Finally, it falls back to the default values (10 and 7)

What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.8.0 ~ 8.9.0

There have been a few small updates to keep up with the changes all the while working on the new settings page.

Features

  • Add animating tool windows
  • New feature: Shadows: Add shadows to the notifications and popups.
Shadows
Shadows

Fixes

  • Fix the size of the dropdown items
  • Fix regressions caused by the latest EAP
  • Changed Run Toolbar Widget color to button color
  • Fix the “no displayName” issue

Other

  • Refactor code: migrate from MTLafInstaller to MTThemeManager
  • Refactor: fix some padding issues
  • Add latest UI properties

What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.7.0 - 8.7.1

Another bugfix release, concentrating on issues happening on Windows:

Fixes

  • Overlays: Fix the issue with the Overlays being too dark on full screen (#329)
  • Theme: Fix the transparency issue on the Tip of the Day dialog (#353) (#349)
  • Changelog: Fix the Changelog not being updated

Other

  • Rewrite the Plugin description displayed on the Plugins Page
  • Updated screenshots to reflect the most updated state
  • Upgrade dependencies

By the way, you’ve probably noticed that the releases are much less frequent than before. This is due to the fact that we’ve been currently working on a complete overhaul of all the settings page and configuration. This is a huge task, and we’re trying to make it as smooth as possible, so it takes a lot of time. But we’re getting there, and we hope to be able to release it soon!


What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.6.0

Yet another bug fix release to take care of more annoying issues:

Features

  • Custom Theme: Listen for color scheme changes while on the custom theme and save it accordingly
  • Project Frame: Truncate the text displayed on the Project Frame’s variables to 150 chars
  • Overlays: Add Find in Files popup to the list of overlaid popups
  • Mac Tab Bar: Remove borders

Fixes

  • Remove Panel.background and Viewport.background key to force panels to be re-rendered between theme changes (#296)
  • Fix the Tab Highlight not appearing on floating windows (#314)
  • Project Frame: Update the project frame text on tab selection
  • Material Trees: Support for Trees with custom icons (such as Git Branches)
  • Material Popups: Fix the Popup windows’ title font to be bigger
  • Color Schemes: Add Smart command colors to color schemes (#305)

Other

  • Refactor: Replace with Light Services
  • Native Themes: Try another method of loading resources
  • Replace deprecated methods and classes

Hope this release will make the plugin even more enjoyable!

Happy Coding!


What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.5.0

Long time no see! It has been pretty busy lately, with other projects taking a lot of time. But recently was marked by new EAP updates, and therefore a plugin update was necessary to accomodate to the new changes.

Apart from deprecation fixes, this version introduces the new Themed macOS Project Bar.

Themed macOS Project Bar

The macOS Project Bar is not a new feature, allowing you to sideload multiple projects inside one same window. However, it was missing on the New UI, as it needed a new implementation to fit with the new Title Bar.

But the latest release brought it back, and therefore needed attention from the plugin as well.

Themed Project Bar
Themed Project Bar

But that’s not all! It also supports the Colorize Title Bar feature, making it blend with the colorized title bar ( New UI only).

Colorized Project Bar - Project 1
Colorized Project Bar - Project 1
Colorized Project Bar - Project 2
Colorized Project Bar - Project 2

I hope you enjoy this new release!

And don’t forget to rate the plugin!!! :)

Happy coding!


What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.4.2

This release in-between fixes support for 2023.1 EAP

Fixes:

  • Support for 2023.1
  • Rewrite Tab Height feature
  • Improve Tool Windows on Hover
  • Change Custom Tag Name color
  • Fix deprecations

What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.4.1

Another bug fix update, alongside the implementation of the new Sync Settings capability.

Sync Settings support

2022.3 brought the newer Sync Settings feature, which transparently syncs all settings between machines. The previous sync settings feature was relying on a JBA account for syncing settings, while the new one uses a transaction system, like Git. This means that you can now sync settings between machines without having to create a JetBrains account.

As a result, plugin developers can now sync their plugin’s settings with that system very easily, without the need to implement anything. This means that from now on your settings, custom theme or project settings will now be synced between machines, in the case you decide to use the feature. However, you have much less control over the syncing process, as it’s handled by JetBrains directly, so there might be some issues here and there.

You will be finding the Material Theme settings under the UI category.

Other fixes

  • Add {path} and {fullPath} options to the Project Frame Custom Text setting. They will be replaced with the project path and full path respectively.
  • Add a new setting to hide the Wizard option at the Welcome Screen.
  • Make the Popups color to the background color
  • Improve Colorized Title Bar for lighter themes by making the colors brighter.
  • Fix narrow password fields
  • Material File Status Colors: Listen to the current color scheme rather than the one from the theme.
  • Atom One Dark: Slightly brighter highlight color.
  • Add the latest UI properties,

What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.3.1

Another bugfix release. However this release includes a coupon for a 50% discount for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. You can find more information on the plugin page!

Fixes

  • Fix Selection Foreground color on Solarized Light
  • Improve contrast on some icons in Light Themes
  • Change Running widget background color from Accent to Highlight.
  • Make Notification tool window color the same as the Theme’s notification color

Other

  • Add Black Friday discount to the plugin description

What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.14.0 / v8.2.0

Another bug fix version for 2022.2/2022.3. This update fixes a few issues causing freezes or fatal errors, amongst others:

  • Settings: Add Per-Project Default settings: Predefined project settings to be applied for new projects.
  • Project Tree: Implement Material Trees to allow customization such as the Project Tree Indicator to remain when not in focus.
  • Themes: Make the Tree Color opaque in all themes to prevent selection artifacts.
  • Wizard: Prevent Freeze when skipping defaults
  • Text Fields: Do not add the custom border if it goes under a certain size (such as Docker Add Network Panel)
  • Language Additions: Set annotations’ icon and description to inform people they are not errors but simple annotations used to paint language additions.
  • Color Schemes: Change the “notification banners” color to the same color as the notification popups.
  • Focus Mode: Fix the error when invoking the Add Method action in some instances when the method would “expand” the document.

Per-project Default Settings

The Material Theme plugin, for some time now, contains a setting panel allowing you to have different settings per project. At the time of writing, these include:

  • Tab Settings
  • Project Frame Settings

However, it can be tedious to have to configure these settings for every project, when you can simply start from a boilerplate state, and adjust the bells and whistles per-project afterwards.

For instance, you could want your projects, be it old or new, to have a specific tab highlighter position, and a custom project frame color, without having to change it for all projects through the application settings.

Settings Menu (Mac)
Settings Menu (Mac)

Such capabilities already exist for other settings, through the New Projects Setup, but not for the Material Theme. Therefore, since this version (7.14.0), it is now possible, and will affect new projects automatically.

Per-Project Defaults
Per-Project Defaults

Note: This will NOT affect existing projects!

Language Additions Annotator

The next feature is less of a fix but more like additional details to an existing feature. According to another section of this document:

Last but not least, the Languages Additions feature received an improvement as well, deprecating the need of the Enforce Highlighting switch. This was done by the use of the SeverityProvider, which allows plugin developers to add their own “error severities”. By doing so, the language additions no longer appear as Weak Warnings, but instead, fall into their own custom category, therefore not getting in the way of genuine warnings.

But this was not clear enough. The annotations were grouped alongside the warnings and errors, which made people believe they had errors in their code when it was simply annotations that they could disable.

Therefore, this version adds a new icon and description to the checker tooltip, to make it clear that they are not errors, but simply annotations used to paint language additions.

Language Addition Annotations
Language Addition Annotations

That’s it! Happy coding :) !


What’s new in Material Theme UI v8.0.0

Coming just right after version 7.11.0, this is the first version for the new 2022.3 EAP.

With the New UI now globally available, the Material Theme UI plugin had to be available as soon as possible, therefore, this version is merely focusing on getting ready for 2022.3.

That being said, this version also brought its lots of small fixes and improvements, especially for the Material Theme Wizard. Screens have been reworked to better showcase the newest features, and many small artifacts have been corrected in the process.

Also, a new tab has been added to the Welcome Screen to quickly open the Wizard. This will certainly prove useful for people that have skipped the wizard on the first start, or for people that configured it a while ago and didn’t get to see the newest additions.

Welcome Screen
Welcome Screen

By the way, remember that EAP users can use the premium features for free!

Enjoy!


What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.11.0

This is the latest version of the 2022.2 versions of the plugin. With the 2022.3 EAP already around the corner, work will very soon shift to that branch instead. That being said, this version brings two small but interesting features to the arsenal.

Tab Separators

This version finalizes the planned tab features for 2022 by introducing support for Tab Separators.

These are thin, almost transparent borders that can be added between tabs to ease the distinction between them.

Without Tab Separators
Without Tab Separators
With Tab Separators
With Tab Separators

Focus Mode

The second brand-new feature of this release is a feature called “Focus Mode”.

Originally inspired by an extension with the same name, this feature has been added to the plugin’s feature as well, with more customization options.

Focus Mode (Oceanic)
Focus Mode (Oceanic)
Focus Mode (Lighter)
Focus Mode (Lighter)

What this feature does is to help you focus on the current part of the code you’re editing, by “unhighlighting” the other parts surrounding it. This can further help you to code without distractions!

As this feature is highly dependent on the way people code, it is disabled by default, in order to not bother people used to code the usual way.

By default, the color of the unfocused parts is taken from the current theme, but you can decide to use your own color as well.

Custom Focus Color (black)
Custom Focus Color (black)
Custom Focus Color (white)
Custom Focus Color (white)

You can find this feature under the “Other Tweaks” tab.

This feature is available only available for premium users having bought the Language Additions feature.

Fixes and Improvements

  • Now the “What’s New” page will take the current theme into consideration!
  • Added more of the newest settings to the Material Theme Wizard: Project Tree Font, Custom UI Font, Tab Font, Animated Tabs, Focus Mode…
  • Fix the fatal error happening to some users with the Tab Highlight Indicator.
  • Fix the small error with the Project Tree refresh when the said tree is not loaded.

What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.10.0

This version focuses on bug fixes and improvements for various parts of the plugin.

License checking refactor

The first improvement is a complete refactoring of the license checking process.

It’s been almost two years since the plugin became a freemium plugin, and since then a lot of changes have been brought to the licensing system: free plan, new features, external plugins and so on. Moreover, with the license checking becoming asynchronous, leading to many people having access to premium features even though they were on the free plan, and oftentimes with no possibility to turn them off.

Therefore, it was time for a refactor of the whole process. This refactor attempts to cover all use cases that we can think of:

  • Free plan users
  • Premium users that downgraded to the free plan
  • Free plan users with the external plugins
  • Premium users

Besides, information about the external plugins licenses can be found on the About page.

Material Theme Bundles Licences
Material Theme Bundles Licences

Custom Tree Font Improvement

Another long-awaited fix is the ability to change the Project View Tree Font without having to restart the IDE.

This was something quite difficult to implement, as even within JetBrains, a restart was required upon changing the font size.

JetBrains' Advanced Settings
JetBrains' Advanced Settings

Thankfully, with time comes experience, and we finally found a workaround for this issue, therefore giving the full ability to customize the Project View without a restart.

Tree Font Change
Tree Font Change

Language Additions Improvement

Last but not least, the Languages Additions feature received an improvement as well, deprecating the need of the Enforce Highlighting switch.

This was done by the use of the SeverityProvider, which allows plugin developers to add their own “error severities”. By doing so, the language additions no longer appear as Weak Warnings, but instead, fall into their own custom category, therefore not getting in the way of genuine warnings.

Other changes

  • Improved the Wizard UI
  • Improved the Custom Theme UI Settings
  • Improved the Project Based Settings
  • Fix the Project-Based Tab Highlighting applying to all projects

What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.9.0

Go Additions

Another small addition to the list of Language Additions: Go Additions

GoLand users and Go plugin users are now able to customize specific keywords of the Go language:

  • Functions:
    • main
    • make
    • len, cap
    • Print, Println, Printf
  • Keywords:
    • import, package
    • func
    • if, else
    • switch, case, default, fallthrough
    • for, range, map
    • return
    • var, const
    • type
    • defer
    • struct
    • interface
    • go, select
    • chan
  • Primitives:
    • nil
    • true, false

Other bug fixes and additions

  • Add Conventional Commit plugin’s color scheme support
  • Fix Synthwave’s Caret row color
  • Fix Registry’s text area not cleaning up the text
  • Fix indentation in the Language Additions’ Color Settings Pages
  • Adding more recommended plugins

What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.8.1

This is a bug fix version that solves some long awaited issues.

  • Fix NPE on the Title Frame
  • Remove deprecated color scheme keys about Markdown Navigator
  • Added newer color keys:
    • Run Toolbar Widget
    • PackageSearch
    • Search Everywhere Settings
    • Editor Tooltip Foreground
    • Main menu foreground
    • Debugger
    • Main Menu
    • Version Control Commit
    • Editor Pane Splitter
    • Version Control Marker
    • Banner Warning
  • Set Toolbar widgets foreground color to selected foreground
  • Fix Colorize Title Bar on Linux

What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.8.0

A small update to keep things going :)

Animated Tabs

A small yet cool feature that makes your editor even cooler by animating the tab indicators!

Animated Tabs
Animated Tabs

Other fixes

  • Fix the Custom UI Font not being applied when using the Experimental New UI

What’s new in Material Theme UI from v7.5.4 up to v7.7.1?

Editorial

2022.2 is officially out! The JetBrains folks have been working constantly on the new version for the last three months, especially in the performance and remote departments. The result is a more stable experience accompanied with a lot of great features, such as:

  • Migration to JDK 17
  • Remote Gateway improvements
  • User Experience and Quality of life improvements
  • etc

But the plugin didn’t stop during all this time! As updates kept coming, so was the plugin adapting itself to the newest additions and deprecations, in order to keep being the plugin you cherish and love.

Oh and the New UI Preview is officially out for beta-testing! Which means that it’s time for the plugin to give it a proper goodbye, so that we can leave it to the pros and concentrate of the plugin’s unique features.

You can find more information in the JetBrains Blog.

Now let’s focus on these last three months changes:

Sunsetting the Experimental UI

As stated above, the New UI Preview has officially begun it’s beta-phase, and thousands of users started experiencing what Material Theme users have been experiencing all along, which is their brand-new rewriting of the UI.

For many years this new UI preview has been available as a highly experimental setting in the plugin, first labeled Striped Tool Windows, then Large Tool Windows, and finally Experimental UI, giving users the opportunity to experience it first-hand, even in it’s super-beta-experimental state.

But now that the cat is out of the bag, there’s no need to keep it in the plugin anymore, and therefore the setting has been removed altogether, as it became incompatible with the New UI Preview plugin.

Note: The New UI Preview program has since then been closed, so there’s no way to download the plugin anymore officially. However, we still have a copy of it available here. You can also find it in our Slack channel.

Colorize Title Bar

The second highlight of this version is also related to the New UI users only, and is about an extension of the Project Frame: the ability to Colorize the Title Bar!

Colorize title bar
Colorize title bar

This was something that wasn’t possible before, but the New UI introduced a flashy new “title bar component” to replace the original title bar (the same way the Material Theme did in the past), and this one is customizable.

So there it is, the perfect Project Frame! And it can be customized per project!

Note: As usual, you can still disable it from the Project Frame Settings. And it’s available in the separate standalone plugin as well.


What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.5.4

Yet another small update that introduces new exciting features.

The Material Theme UI is a great plugin, but there are also literally thousands of other plugins available in the Marketplace. Some are great, some not so much, but in any case it can be a little hard to get to find out the hidden pearls in this sea of available options.

Introducing the Recommended plugins: It’s another settings page found inside the Material Theme Settings that showcases a hand-picked list of useful plugins and remarkable themes for you to discover at a glance rather than navigating the whole sea of available plugins in the Marketplace.

Recommended Plugins
Recommended Plugins

Most of these plugins are UI-related, grouped into three sections:

  • Recommended plugins: Hand-picked list of great plugins to use alongside the Material Theme UI.
  • Material Plugins: These are the standalone paid plugins that you can buy separately instead of the main plugin.
  • Great Themes: Curated list of amazing themes that can be sideloaded with the Material Theme UI.

Come take a look! And if you have other great recommendations, please post them on the chat or in the GitHub repo!

Oh and by the way: this is a purely subjective list! So please don’t be mad if a plugin you love isn’t on the list!


What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.5.3

New StatusBar Widget: Current Project

This version introduces a new widget to the Status Bar, which displays the current project and gives the ability to open other projects via a menu. This is based on a similar widget available on the title bar in the new UI.

Recent Projects Widget
Recent Projects Widget

Material Theme Bundles

This version finalizes the support of the Material Theme Bundles, by releasing 5 packages related to the different paid features:

As stated in Material Theme Bundles section, these plugins are to be loaded as an alternate way to purchase a license, by providing a way to purchase only the features that are relevant to you.

For instance, if you are only interested in the Language Additions feature and don’t want to purchase the whole package, you can decide to install the relevant plugin at a lower price.

Important: If you already have purchased the main plugin, purchasing these plugins will do nothing, so be careful! These only make sense if you are using the Free Version (and not to be confused with the Material Theme Lite)!

Other fixes

  • Fix #187
  • Update Translations

What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.5.2

Custom Color Scheme in Custom Themes

This update expands the functionalities of the Custom Theme by giving the ability to specify a color scheme to your custom theme.

Custom Theme Color Scheme
Custom Theme Color Scheme

This is particularly useful if you have “Custom Color Schemes” and want to assign them to your own custom theme.

Note: If the color scheme cannot be found (for example if you decide to use the _@user schemes or if you select a plugin based scheme), it will automatically revert to Darcula)

Other fixes

  • Fix #168
  • Attempt at fixing #174
  • Initial support for “Material Theme Extension Plugins

What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.5.1

This small update fixes the Experimental UI not working after the update to 2022.1.2, as well as adding more languages support in the color schemes: Angular Template, Qute and Sonarlint.

In addition, the color for Modified Files in the SynthWave ‘84 theme has been changed as well.


What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.5.0

Japanese, Chinese and Korean support

This version adds support for three additional languages: Japanese, Chinese (simplified) and Korean.

Thanks to machine learning and external translators, we’ve been finally able to translate the plugin into the three popular asian languages. To enable it, you’ll need to install the IDE language packs, and the plugin will be automatically translated to the corresponding language.

Settings - Japanese
Settings - Japanese
Custom Theme - Korean
Custom Theme - Korean
Actions - Chinese
Actions - Chinese
Wizard - Chinese
Wizard - Chinese

Of course, there could be some inconsistencies between the english texts and their asian counterparts. In such cases, we’d appreciate if you could report such inconsistencies, and perhaps provide better translations!

Note: You can only use one language pack at a time! Please make sure to remove the languages you don’t use, or you would end up with mixed translations!


What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.4.0

New Material Theme Widgets

Material theme widget

The old Material Theme widget has been redone to better blend with the other widgets. It sports the current theme name and icon, and you can open a menu with the list of available themes.

Material Theme + Accent Widget
Material Theme + Accent Widget
Theme Selection Widget
Theme Selection Widget

Accent color widget

Just besides the theme widget, you can also display the Accent Color Widget. It sports the current accent color, and displays the list of available predefined accent colors when clicked.

Material Theme + Accent Widgets
Material Theme + Accent Widgets
Accent Color Widget
Accent Color Widget

Deprecation of the old Material theme widget

You can still find the previous legacy widget:

Status Bar Widget
Status Bar Widget
Accent Widget
Accent Widget

Other fixes

As usual, this version also comes with its bug fixes and improvements:

  • Fix visual issue when Menus weren’t highlighted in the Legacy Material Design
  • Fix fatal error when opening the wizard
  • Fix fatal error when opening the Command Palette
  • Fix issue where the Project Tree being colored in Accent Mode
  • Fix minimum size of fields when using Compact Fields
  • Fix minimum size of table headers when using Compact Table Cells
  • Make Tab Shadows feature free

What’s new in Material Theme UI v7.0.0-7.3.2

The 7.X.X versions up to 7.3.2 contained mainly the same changes than of the 6.14.X up to 6.16.X, but for the 2022.1 IDEs. However, there are some changes that need to be mentioned:

Large Tool Windows deprecation and Experimental UI

As with every major IDE updates, a lot of work needed to be done to support the newest releases, alongside their breaking changes and deprecations.

One of the features that got the cut was the very famous Large Tool Windows, which was sometimes buggy but nonetheless a very awaited redesign. Since this wasn’t a feature made by the plugin, it was very difficult to open the feature to the public despite the barriers, but this time it became utterly impossible, because it got merged with the complete redesign of the IDE.

As a result, the old setting has been removed, and temporarily replaced with a new setting to open this Experimental UI instead. However, we do NOT recommend using this UI as this is a largely buggy and highly suspect to change between new releases of the IDE. If you’re aware of the risks, you can try it, but don’t come complaining if there are issues.


What’s new in Material Theme UI v6.16.1

This is a bugfix update for many issues related to the new UI.

Fixes

  • Improve the UI of the tag buttons: alignment, close button, color, etc
  • Add exclusions to replacing specific text fields: Plugins pages, New File popup, JFormDesigner inline edit, Prettier options etc
  • Fix outlined buttons disabled border color
  • Limit the minimum left and right indent at 4 as it wouldn’t work below it.
  • Synthwave color scheme improvements: Kotlin instance field color
  • Prevent showing the “what’s new” popup when the setting is disabled

What’s new in Material Theme UI v6.16.0

New Feature: Custom UI Font

A new setting has been added to the Material UI Settings Features: Custom UI Font. This font replaces (or rather, expands on) the original Material Fonts to provide the ability to choose your own font.

Actually, this feature supplements the Custom Font feature provided by JetBrains, so this is just another way to change the IDE font.

This feature is available to all users.

Fixes:

  • Added back missing properties from legacy Material Design style (selected items, color panels etc)
  • Remove need for restart when applying legacy Material Design style
  • Fix Scrollbars Color Settings non-translated texts on Linux
  • Align new comboboxes with other fields
  • Fix buttons text vertical and horizontal alignments
  • Add accent color to focused fields
  • Add new Material UI Border to fields that removed it (Find in Files, Plugins Search and others)
  • Fix text not showing when editing table cells
  • Fix Option button arrow

What’s new in Material Theme UI v6.15.0

Legacy Material Design

The latest version introduced a new UI with a lot of changes: broader components, rounder buttons and so on. However, not all people were happy with the changes, be it because they didn’t like the new style, or simply because they were used to the old, sharper design and the signature of the legacy Material Design of 2016.

Therefore, in order to not drive people away, we decided to add it back! Disabled by default, you can find it inside the Components tab, in the Material Theme settings.

Please note however that this style remains deprecated. It means, we’re not planning to remove it for the moment, but we won’t be adding any new features nor fix any bugs that might occur in the future.

Fixes

  • Add a bit more spacing between buttons.
  • Remove the glitch that happened during selection in lists.

What’s new in Material Theme UI v6.14.0

New UI!!!

The Material Design components experienced a major overhaul to conform to the latest Material Design specification.

New Components Showcase
New Components Showcase

Here’s a brief overview of the new components:

Text Fields, Password Fields and Number Fields

Input Fields have become larger, with a rounded border, losing their Material Design 2017 style of having a single bottom border. The reasoning behind this, according to Material Design principles, is to make them more discoverable and interactable.

Moreover, since these larger components can take a lot of space, a new setting has been added to the Compact Settings to allow you to have smaller fields.

More info: https://material.io/components/text-fields#anatomy

Text Areas

Text Areas underwent the same process and will now sport a rounded border, just like the text fields, making them more discoverable as well.

ComboBoxes and Menus

ComboBoxes (or dropdowns) got the same border style as well, and their options are now showing up under the text field, instead of over it. The caret icon (the arrow) also changed to the usual Material Design chevron.

Menus have too undergone some changes and became larger as well, with the option to tweak up the items size through the Compact Settings.

More info: https://material.io/components/menus#usage

Buttons

Buttons got rounder, smaller and now sport a small shadow under them, making them stand out more, like regular buttons. The other options (uppercase, outlined, etc.) are still available.

More info: https://material.io/components/buttons#anatomy

Search Fields

The search fields also underwent a redesign, becoming larger and bordered, but with a sharp border. The reason for this is that they are usually encapsulated in a more complex UI, such as the “Search Everywhere” or “Find in Files” popups.

New Search Fields
New Search Fields

They are also affected by the “Compact Fields” setting.

Trees

Trees got their selected item design changed to sport a rounded border just like the other components. They look like the design of the navigation drawer’s selected items from https://material.io/components/navigation-drawer#usage.

Moreover, a new style of Selected Tree Indicators, bolder and rounder, replaces the current one. You can still use the old one from the options though, renamed “Sharp”.

Of course, the previous options (List Items Height, Indentation, etc.) are still available.

Other updates

Other updated elements include:

  • Color Picker Fields
  • Table Headers
  • Menu Items

The Navigation Bar and Notifications have been redesigned too, but are only available in 2022.1+.


This redesign involved a lot of refactoring of the old components, as well as a full rewrite in Kotlin. Since it is impossible to check the whole UI, there might be bugs not yet discovered. In that case, please report them to the GitHub repository as soon as possible, thanks!

This was a lot of hard work, but I hope you’ll like it :)


What’s new in Material Theme UI v6.13.0

The first version of 2022 introduces a new set of Material Themes, expanding the current collection with new themes that are not available elsewhere, as well as new language additions for Ruby and initial support for Material Theme bundles


Material Theme Bundles

Material Theme “Bundles” (or “plugins”, or “addons”) are a way to benefit of Material Theme’s paid features separately, without having to pay for the core plugin.

Since the plugin became paid, a lot of users were left disappointed by suddenly having to pay for features they have been enjoying for free, leading to a lot of frustrations. Although I’ve been trying to alleviate the frustration by giving more transparency about the reasons of the move, or through free plans and vouchers, still, for some users, the loss of their favourite feature was unacceptable.

In fact, for some, they couldn’t care less about the whole package, but THAT specific feature being unavailable was a true loss.

Introducing Material Theme Bundles: these are separate plugins that provide alternative access to the paid features. For example, let’s say you are only interested in the Custom Theme feature but don’t need the Tab Settings, Project Frame or Language Additions, you would be able to purchase it separately and benefit from it without having to buy a premium license.

Of course, these bundles would not be free; otherwise there would be no point of having to purchase a premium license. But they will be at a lesser price than the whole package.

At the moment, the only bundle available is the High Contrast feature for an annual cost of $3 only.

Others will follow, depending on the demand. Currently, the planned ones for 2022 are:

  • Custom Theme
  • Language Additions
  • Project Frame Colors
  • Project View Settings

PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE BUNDLES MUST NOT BE BOUGHT IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A PREMIUM LICENSE. They only provide access to the paid features to people on the free plan, so buying them when you have a paid plan would only result in paying twice for the same thing. {:class=’card-panel warn’}


New Material Themes

You might be aware that the original Material Themes from @equinusocio have not had changes for a long time. It’s fine, these themes are awesome and a personal favorite too. However, the Material Theme color scheme is great on its own, and can easily live in different environments than the ocean and the night. Therefore, we’ve decided to run our imagination run wild and started working on new “ environmental themes”.

Introducing Nature Material Themes!!!
Forest Theme
Forest Theme
Sky Blue Theme
Sky Blue Theme
Volcano Theme
Volcano Theme
Sandy Beach Theme
Sandy Beach Theme

As said previously, these themes are completely new, and thus can be subject to a few modifications in the future, especially regarding contrast.

Let me know what you think of them!


SynthWave ‘84

Another theme we’ve been working on is the implementation of the famous SynthWave ‘84 from Robb Owen.

SynthWave '84 Theme
SynthWave '84 Theme

This theme is one of the most popular VSCode themes, especially thanks to it’s “Glowing Neons” feature, and I thought it would make a great theme for JetBrains products as well.

Unfortunately, there is no way to get the “Glowing Neons” to work in our favourite IDEs, but be sure that we are looking for ways to make it possible!


Theme Reorganization

As part of the newest additions, the theme selection menus have been reorganized to group light and dark themes together.

Theme Groups
Theme Groups

Ruby Additions

And last but not least, a new Language Addition made its way alongside the others: Ruby.

Just like Python, Ruby Additions are now available for Ruby-based IDEs, and provide additional coloring for the following keywords:

Keywords:

  • begin, rescue, finally
  • case
  • when
  • class
  • def
  • do
  • if, elsif, else, unless
  • module, namespace
  • not, and, or
  • private, protected, public
  • raise
  • require, require_self, require_relative
  • return, yield
  • self
  • while, until, loop

Primitives:

  • nil
  • true, false

Methods:

  • attr_reader, attr_writer, attr_accessor
  • initialize
  • new
  • puts
Ruby Additions
Ruby Additions

Note: As usual, this feature is only available for premium users. {:class=’card-panel warn’}


What’s new in Material Theme UI v6.12.0

This version is less about new features but more about project consolidation, bug squashing, code deprecation, documentation and migration to Kotlin. It’s part of a long process to make the project more stable and maintainable. {:class=’title’}

Here are a few new features though:

Automatically Reset Color Scheme

One of the main complaints of the plugin is that it constantly asks the user to reset their color schemes, but in actuality most users have no idea how to nor do want to do so. Even though a lot of documentation is available regarding the subject, since the plugin relies a lot on the color schemes, relying on user interaction means that there is a high chance they are going to miss new updates.

Therefore, from version 6.12.0 users can now decide to let the plugin automatically reset the color scheme during theme activation, i.e., at startup and whenever the theme is changed.

Auto Reset Color Scheme
Auto Reset Color Scheme

This setting only affects the bundled themes, excluding the Custom theme.

Note: This feature is opt-in, meaning that it is disabled by default, to prevent accidental erasure of user custom modifications. Make sure to backup your custom changes before enabling the feature!

This feature is available in the free plan. {:class=’card-panel’}

Python Additions

Another small addition to the list of Language Additions: Python Additions

PyCharm users and Python plugin users are now able to customize specific keywords of the Python language:

  • if, elif, else, for, while, do
  • import, from
  • class
  • def
  • as
  • return, yield
  • try, except, finally
  • with
  • raise
  • print
  • True, False and None

Many bug fixes, improvements and deprecations

  • Migration to Java 11
  • Converted 70% of the plugin in Kotlin, and fixed all detekt issues
  • Fix Premium features not being loaded at start
  • Fix Custom Theme not being applied at start
  • Add initial support for Material Theme internal plugins
  • Remove Custom Theme opacity support for many colors except buttons, tree highlight and notifications
  • Fix issue with Buttons keeping the color of the previous theme when switching themes.
  • Fix Red color being too dark in dark themes (and too bright in light themes)
  • Support for new color keys for the whole UI
  • Fix loading in JetBrains Gateway
  • Support for new color keys for the diagrams
  • Fix Load and Save Custom Themes
  • Fix Colored Open Folders not working

This is a huge refactoring release, so there might be some regressions here and there. Please report any issues you find, thanks!


What’s new in Material Theme UI v6.11.1

Features

  • Add new action to manually remove lingering overlays in the rare case it happens
  • Added more notifications when triggering actions

Fixes

  • Fix Plugin not loading Premium features at start
  • Fix Large Tool Windows not working in latest EAP/RC
  • Fix Material Oceanic scrollbars’ colors (you need to reset the color scheme) (#34)
  • Fix Color Scheme Font resetted to Default Font even when the checkbox is unchecked (#37)
  • Fix Fatal Error when using Darcula Theme (#33)

What’s new in Material Theme UI v6.10.0

This release brings a lot of new features, mostly related to font customization. {:class=’title’}

Tabs Custom Font

Continuing from the Tab Font Size feature, you will now be able to customize the font displayed in the editor tabs.

Tab Font Settings
Tab Font Settings
Custom Tab Font
Custom Tab Font

This font will be different from the one used for the whole IDE.

You can find the setting in the Tab Settings panel.

Tree Custom Font

Just like the tabs, you will now be able to customize the Trees’ Font Family as well.

Tree Font Settings
Tree Font Settings
Custom Tree Font
Custom Tree Font

Just like the Tree Font Size, you will need to close and reopen the project (or restart) to see the changes.

You can find the setting in the Project View Settings panel.

Use Editor Default Font

Another long awaited feature is the ability to override the current scheme’s Editor Font with the default font.

While this can be done via the Color Scheme settings, it can become a bit daunting to have to do this manually for every color scheme. Moreso when switching between color schemes many times a day!

This setting provides a way to undo this by turning off the color schemes’ defined font and use the Default Font instead.

Use Editor Default Font
Use Editor Default Font

Note: Turning on this setting will immediately cause the current color scheme to be edited, as if you changed the color scheme font with the default one. Even if you turn it back on, the original color scheme font will not be restored, you will need to restore the color scheme to do so. {: class=’card-panel warn’}

Reset Color Scheme Action

A new action has been added to the Quick Actions Panel, giving you the ability to restore the color scheme easily, rather than going to the settings.

You can find the action in the Material Theme Features menu.

Support for DataSpell

Last but not least, JetBrains’ DataSpell support has finally been added to the color schemes. This fixes the issue: https://github.com/mallowigi/material-theme-issues/issues/25.

You will need to reset your color schemes to get this change


Deprecation of the External Themes

After a long consideration, starting this version, the External Themes feature has been deprecated, and be no longer working.

For that, I’d like to give a proper eulogy to the feature, how it started, and what are the plans for the future.

In the beginning, there were no way of having themes in the IDE, aside from IntelliJ Light and Darcula. Then this plugin came out and with it, a few themes were available out of the box. Soon enough, other themes joined the fray, as well as the very popular Custom Theme feature, letting people define their own themes from a simple easy to use UI.

This was great and all, but unfortunately these custom themes weren’t exportable, except from the xml config file. People started exporting their custom theme xml file for people to see, and other people had to import these colors one by one manually. Wouldn’t it be better if people were allowed to install such custom themes via the plugin marketplace?

There was the main idea of the External Themes feature. By exposing an Extension Point, plugin developers would now be able to add their own custom theme xml file, the same way they were able to add their color schemes or code styles. The plugin would then be able to import such custom themes and add them to the list of themes on the fly. An example plugin, the famous Dracula Theme was used to showcase that feature, followed by the Night Owl Theme soon after.

However, the adoption of such a feature was very low. Even though a tutorial was available on the docs, people were mostly unaware of it. Moreover, in 2019 JetBrains finally released an API to allow people to create theme using JSON, with much more flexibility in terms of customization than the Material Theme External Themes.

As a result, people starting making themes using JetBrains’ API rather than the Material Theme one, and rightfully so. At the start, these themes were incompatible with the Material Theme API, but soon enough the plugin started supporting them as well, to the detriment of the external themes. Even people that have written external themes have long removed that support in favor of the native themes. In the meantime, bugs regarding the external themes were piling up, and such issues were affected to the back of the backlog. Everytime we tried fixing those issues, we were met with more issues, since they are very incompatible with the native themes support.

So it was time to pull the plug, and let this feature sink in. From version 6.10.0, the extension point will be * *unavailable**, so themes that were still using that extension point will need to remove the extension. Hopefully, most of the themes in the market have done that long ago, but otherwise they will need to update a fix removing that extension point.

So what happens for external themes then?

Rather than investing on the external themes, resources will be shifted to the native themes support, and their integration with the Material Theme. Currently, the plugin uses specific properties of the native themes to find out what color to use in the Material Theme API (i.e., which color to use for the excluded color, the accent color, etc.). Starting this version, themes can also define material based properties that the plugin will parse to figure out which color to assign to which resource.

These colors are the following:

  • material.background
  • material.foreground
  • material.primaryColor
  • material.selectionBackground
  • material.selectionForeground
  • material.button
  • material.second
  • material.disabled
  • material.contrast
  • material.active
  • material.border
  • material.highlight
  • material.tree
  • material.notifications
  • material.accent
  • material.excluded

More information on the Custom Themes

In the future, a new settings page will be available to allow users to customize such properties from the UI directly. Stay tuned!