makepad/widgets/themes/README.md

Application styles

These Splash files are the library's own sheets, one per desktop family the window manager lays out: omarchy, black-orange, macos, macos-dark, windows, windows-dark, windows-2000, nextstep, ios, ios-dark, android and android-dark.

The sheet catalogue

Every style is a sheet in one catalogue (widgets/core/src/desktop_style.rs): a SheetEntry holds its id, its label, the desktop family it lays out as (DesktopStyle: floating or tiled, shelf, title bar, icons, the WM's style tween), the id of its dark variant, both Splash halves embedded, the source directory a checkout hotloads them from, and the crate its crate_resource("self:...") resolves against. The sheets above are the catalogue's first entries, made with sheet_entry!. An app brings its own sheets the same way and adds them at startup, before the first style load:

static SHEETS: [SheetEntry; 1] = [makepad_widgets::sheet_entry!(
    dir: "themes", id: "harbour", label: "Harbour",
    family: DesktopStyle::Omarchy, dark: None, resources: makepad_widgets::widgets_dir,
)];
desktop_style::register(&SHEETS);

Every list of styles -- the pickers, the WM's style menu, the theme lab and store, the storybook's theme list -- reads the catalogue (desktop_style::catalogue, picks, find), so a registered sheet turns up everywhere without being named anywhere else. Sheets that belong to one app live with that app, in a crate of its own, not here. The checks every sheet is held to are sheet_checks in widgets-core (the sheet-checks feature for an app's own tests).

Each style has two phases:

• theme.splash installs semantic roles, typography, spacing, radii, and bevels before stock widgets are registered.
• widgets.splash applies component geometry and materials after registration. It can replace a widget's shader as well as its properties. Windows 2000's raised buttons and sunken edit fields are examples.

A replaced button face still shows the colour an app paints on it: apps light a latch (the page they are on, a mute that is down) by setting draw_bg.color. Each Button* face a sheet draws goes through self.host_over(face, m) (m the room the sheet grew its quad by) or fills with self.host_face(...) or self.face_fill(). At the variant's own color_default these return the sheet's face unchanged; sheet_checks::button_faces_take_the_host_colour holds every sheet to it.

The surface material

The rounded view, the panel, the button, the check box, the toggle, the slider and the knob carry a moulded material behind one uniform, material, whose default is the theme's material_level. Every stock theme leaves it at 0, so those shaders draw exactly what they always did; a sheet built on it raises it in its theme.splash before any widget registers (1 relief, 2 relief with rim, gloss and specular), and the material_* tokens beside it set the key light, the shoulder, the finish, the cast and inner shadows, the glow and the press. The shading is mod.sdf.Material in draw/src/shader/surface.rs, the library ReliefView is lit by too.

A material control keeps its quad and insets its face by theme.material_margin: the room its cast shadow falls into, which a sheet pays for again in the control's padding. The press is one signed number, material_press_depth: past -material_raise a held face inverts, short of it the cap deepens, near zero the glow carries the state (with material_ink_glow lighting the label). The storybook's Containers > Material page shows all three.

The loader embeds both files for installed/wasm builds. In a native source checkout it reads the sheet's source directory (widgets/themes/<style>/ for these) on each selection. Edit either file and choose the same style again from the WM's style picker to hotload it. End a generated assignment-only Splash module with true so its last assignment is evaluated as a statement.

The WM keeps its Omarchy top bar. Click the current style name to open the dropdown. Modern desktop and mobile styles also have a Light/Dark button. Its Applications launcher, Windows Start menus, window chrome, and hosted apps use the selected appearance.

desktop_style::StyleSheet carries both phases to existing process clients through StudioToApp::Custom. Window receives the message and requests an application Splash reload with Apply::ScriptReapply. Module clients re-evaluate their registrations in their existing isolates with the same apply mode. Widget identities, editable text, and application Rust state are retained. Initialize persistent script models only when !vm.is_reload(); read the existing mod.state from application Splash. See examples/counter/src/main.rs. Dynamic View.on_render children and embedded Splash isolates reapply the style too. Embedded Splash widgets inherit the stylesheet and reapply their existing widget tree in their own isolate.

Applications should inherit the stock component styles and read theme.* for custom drawing. Rust drawing reads makepad_widgets::theme_tokens::color(vm, role) during registration or through the owning VM with Cx::with_vm. Re-read these roles after each style reload: appearances can change while an app is open. The WM provides MAKEPAD_WIDGET_STYLE at spawn and the makepad_style sheet event for live changes; apps do not read the WM's desk palette file.

The framebuffer crossfade lives in apps/wm/src/scene.rs. It freezes the old GPU render target while the live scene renders the new style; it does not take screenshots, rebuild app instances, or put transitions in the widget system. Shell geometry interpolates over the same 650 ms interval. Floating desktop rectangles are stored separately from the Omarchy tiling tree, so switching back restores the tiling arrangement.

The macOS dock overlays the desktop; dragging keeps the title bar reachable but allows window bodies behind the dock or partly offscreen. Terminals render only their background with opacity (MAKEPAD_WM_TERM_OPACITY, default 0.78 0.70 for focused/unfocused); text and ANSI cell colors remain crisp. Their foreground and background follow the active light/dark stylesheet without restarting the PTY. color_terminal_bg and color_terminal_text are separate semantic roles: Windows 2000 and Android use opaque black consoles, while NeXTSTEP uses white. Rust terminal drawing reads these tokens directly, using color_bg_app and color_text when the terminal-specific roles are absent. Declare both in each style so a reload resets the previous console palette. The terminal opts into Window.body.keyboard_resize: true; this KeyboardView mode reflows content above the animated keyboard instead of panning the whole terminal out of view. Its grid and PTY resize with the available space.

widgets/core/src/backdrop.rs supplies ordered compositor checkpoints. Windows are composited from back to front, and a glass surface samples a checkpoint below it. Disjoint sampling footprints share a Gaussian stack, including the kernel's support outside the visible surface. Intervening opaque or translucent content that overlaps the footprint starts a new checkpoint. The dock is the final consumer. Requested blur levels are combined before drawing the pyramid, so unused deeper passes are skipped. Explicit producer/consumer links preserve GPU ordering when pass IDs are recycled. MAKEPAD_WM_TRACE_BLUR=1 logs stack and pass counts when they change; normal operation does not log each frame.

In a checkout, build with cargo build --release -p makepad-app-wm, then launch ./target/release/makepad-app-wm --remote from the checkout root. Applications launch on demand with cargo run --release -p <package>; there is no binary collection to prepare. The app's window shows Cargo's compiling or build-wait stage before the process connects, then fades into its first frame. Installed distributions without a source checkout use sibling executables.

NeXTSTEP uses black focused title bars, gray beveled window controls, square widgets, a right-hand vertical application dock, and its own icon family. Its launcher opens a draggable Workspace palette with attached submenu columns. Hold the secondary mouse button on the desktop or a window title bar, drag through the menu and release to choose a command. The popup follows the pointer and opens submenus to the left near the screen edge. The Omarchy top bar and shared application state remain in place while switching styles.

Application icons use AppIcon{name: "files" width: 32 height: 32}. The default style: "auto" follows the application's Splash stylesheet; standalone apps use the host OS family. An explicit style ID is available for galleries. color retints the Omarchy artwork; opacity preserves the other families' own colors. Window captions derive their icon name from window.app_id (or the binary name), and the WM's dock/taskbar/launcher use the same AppIconDraw renderer.

Each family has editable icons/<app-id>.svg assets. macOS dark and light share app artwork, as on the OS. Unknown IDs use that family's app.svg. Add or edit an SVG and reselect the style to hotload it; the complete icon sources travel in the stylesheet to existing process and module apps. Unchanged sources keep their parsed geometry cache. python3 widgets/themes/build_icons.py rebuilds the bundled artwork families using only Python's standard library.

Use original application symbols within each OS's visual style. Files uses a folder with documents, and Browser uses a web window with a globe; do not use the Finder face or Safari compass artwork.

Application surfaces should use the shared theme roles (or app-specific aliases that resolve to those roles), including corner_radius and container_corner_radius. Keep content colors such as chart series and model axes separate. Filled accent actions use color_text_on_accent.

Mark live fields that contain runtime UI state with #[apply_state] alongside #[live]: stylesheet ScriptReapply preserves these values, while explicit Eval edits and ordinary source reloads still apply. Standard panel visibility, checkbox state, and dropdown selection use this path.

On macOS, the WM captures the complete window into a GPU texture and warps that surface into its application icon in the dock. Minimize and restore share the same reversible progress, without resizing or relaying out the application during the animation. A style change invalidates minimized snapshots so the restored window uses the current theme. MAKEPAD_WM_TRACE_WARP=1 enables the capture diagnostics using ordinary logs. For frame inspection, MAKEPAD_WM_WARP_SECONDS=5 slows the default 0.62-second animation.