Scanline

A terminal/TUI-inspired theme for Obsidian.

Scanline is a personal theme — I built it for myself and use it daily as the primary theme across several of my vaults and projects. It's calm and clean, with a retro CRT/TUI aesthetic: monospace-forward typography, quiet borders, and a palette that follows your accent color. I think it's readable, clean, and minimalistic — it doesn't do anything unneeded. I gladly publish it so more people have that option too.

Look & feel

• Dark mode — near-black with a phosphor glow, monospace-forward typography, barely-there borders. Feels like a well-configured terminal.
• Light mode — warm paper tones, soft sepia ink. E-reader friendly and soothing on the eyes.
• Accent-aware — the whole palette (headings, links, tags, file tree, syntax) derives from your accent color. Defaults to a phosphor green; change it under Settings → Appearance → Accent color and the theme follows.
• Understated headings, terminal-style code blocks, monospace tag badges, thin scrollbars, quiet status bar.

Typography

Scanline is monospace-forward by design. It uses the first of these it finds on your system: JetBrains Mono, SF Mono, Fira Code, Cascadia Code, Consolas. No fonts are bundled or fetched — set your favorite under Settings → Appearance → Font to override.

Install

• Community themes: Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage → search for "Scanline".
• Manual: copy theme.css and manifest.json into <your vault>/.obsidian/themes/Scanline/, then select Scanline under Settings → Appearance.

Validation

npm install
npm test

This validates the theme manifest, required assets, README image references, and CSS syntax/common invalid properties. The same checks run on pushes and pull requests through GitHub Actions.

Release

In GitHub, run Actions → Publish next theme release → Run workflow from main, then choose a patch, minor, or major version bump. The workflow validates the theme, updates manifest.json, package.json, and package-lock.json, commits the change, creates a matching tag, and publishes a GitHub release containing only manifest.json and theme.css—the files Obsidian installs.

For a manual release, set the same new version in manifest.json and package.json, run npm ci && npm test, commit the change, and push a tag matching that version.

No bullshit

A simple theme and nothing else: no telemetry, no custom plugin systems, no ads, no obfuscated code, no remote assets. Just a bit of CSS, written from scratch.

License

MIT