Thorn is a rich, green theme made to solve two issues with many themes:

Many themes have a vast amount of highlights, creating a sort of abstract painting when looking at code. Thorn aims to cut down on the amount of different colors with a small palette, making code much more traversable at a glance.

A lot of dark themes are only dark in the sense of their backgrounds. For those with sensitive eyes, high contrast highlights can be straining after awhile. Thorn mitigates this by using soft, low-contrast highlights that are still easily readable, making a long session much more sustainable on the eyes.

• Previews
• Features
• Installation
  • Extras Installation
• Usage
• Configuration

Forest

Field

• Written in 100% Lua
• Dark and Light themes available
  • See Configuration for details
• Plugin support
  • lazy.nvim
  • telescope.nvim
  • gitsigns.nvim
  • trouble.nvim
  • nvim-cmp
  • blink.cmp
  • nvim-tree.lua
  • lualine.nvim
  • bufferline.nvim
  • snacks.nvim
  • render-markdown.nvim
  • oil.nvim
  • oil-git.nvim
  • mini.nvim
• Comes with added themes for other applications (see extras)!
  • Ghostty
  • Kitty
  • Alacritty
  • Btop
  • Opencode
  • tmux
  • lazygit
  • bat
  • fzf
  • delta

vim.pack (neovim 0.12+)

vim.pack.add({ src = "https://github.com/jpwol/thorn.nvim" })

lazy.nvim

{
    "jpwol/thorn.nvim",
    lazy = false,
    priority = 1000,
    opts = {}
}

packer.nvim

use {
    "jpwol/thorn.nvim",
    config = function()
        require("thorn").setup({})
    end,
}

vim-plug

Plug 'jpwol/thorn.nvim', { 'branch': 'main' }

-- after plugin is loaded by your manager
vim.cmd([[colorscheme thorn]])

For LuaLine

require("lualine").setup({
    options = {
        theme = "thorn" -- "auto" also detects theme automatically
    }
})

thorn provides a good amount of customization options, as well as a way to change the color/style of any highlight group of your choosing.

In your plugin setup (lazy.nvim plugin structure used as reference),

return {
    "jpwol/thorn.nvim",
    lazy = false,
    priority = 1000,
    opts = {
        theme = nil, -- 'forest' or 'field' - defaults to vim.o.background if unset

        transparent = false, -- transparent background
        terminal = true, -- terminal colors

        styles = {
            keywords = { italic = true, bold = false },
            comments = { italic = true, bold = false },
            strings  = { italic = true, bold = false },

            diagnostic = {
                underline = true, -- if true, flat underlines will be used. Otherwise, undercurls will be used

                -- true will apply the bg highlight, false applies the fg highlight
                error = { highlight = true, },
                hint  = { highlight = false, },
                info  = { highlight = false, },
                warn  = { highlight = false, },
            },
        },

        on_highlights = function(hl, palette) end, -- apply your own highlights
    },
}

Where on_highlights will be a function, and you can edit any highlight group as follows

on_highlights = function(hl, palette)

    -- setting options by member preserves other options for that group
    hl.String.bold = true
    hl.Function.fg = "#D9ADD4"

    -- setting options by table will CLEAR any other options for that group
    hl.Keyword = { fg = "#F9ADA0", italic = true } -- would clear bold and bg if they were set


    -- you can also use the theme's palette
    hl.String.fg = palette.green_0
end

To install additional themes from extras, follow these steps

If installing thorn with a neovim package manager, locate the install location. For vim.pack, it should be ~/.local/share/nvim/site/pack/core/opt/thorn.nvim, but paths may vary depending on distrobution and configuration.

Otherwise, clone this repository with git clone https://github.com/jpwol/thorn.nvim.

Usually, applications (e.g., Ghostty/Kitty/Alacritty/Btop) rely on a themes folder within the ~/.config/<application> directory. If you haven't created that folder within the relevant directory, please do so. Then simply copy the theme files into the target application's theme directory.

# assuming you're in the thorn.nvim directory

# copying the contents of the application's folder
cp extras/ghostty/* ~/.config/ghostty/themes/

# Alternatively, you can create a symbolic link (linux)
cp -s extras/ghostty/* ~/.config/ghostty/themes/

After this, the theme will be available for whichever application you choose, and you can apply it like you normally would.

For ghostty, you can use ghostty +list-themes to preview the themes, and set them in your config file with theme = Thorn <Style> <Background>.

For kitty, you can simply use kitten themes to preview and apply the theme.

For btop, the theme should appear in the settings menu for selection.

For opencode, copy the files from extras/opencode to ~/.config/opencode/themes, then select them from /themes.

For alacritty, you would use

import = [
    # thorn_style_background.toml being one of the 4 provided themes
    "~/.config/alacritty/themes/thorn_style_background.toml"
]

in your alacritty.toml config file.

For tmux, add this to your tmux.conf (this assumes you're using ~/.config/tmux instead of ~/.tmux.conf)

set -g @thorn-tmux "forest" # can be 'forest' or 'field', default is 'forest'
run-shell "/path/to/thorn.tmux"

Keep in mind that thorn-forest.conf, thorn-field.conf, and thorn.tmux should all be in the same directory.

The path to thorn's tmux theme can be anywhere, but it would preferrably be copied or symlinked to ~/.config/tmux/ or ~/.config/tmux/plugins.

For noctalia-shell, copy or symlink the Thorn/ folder containing Thorn.json into ~/.config/noctalia/colorschemes/. Thorn will then be available in noctalia's colorscheme choices.

For lazygit, the files in extras/lazygit are YAML snippets — merge the contents of thorn-forest.yml (or thorn-field.yml) into your ~/.config/lazygit/config.yml under the existing gui: section. If you don't have a config.yml, you can copy the file directly.

For bat, copy the .tmTheme files into bat's themes directory and rebuild the cache:

mkdir -p "$(bat --config-dir)/themes"
cp extras/bat/*.tmTheme "$(bat --config-dir)/themes/"
bat cache --build

Then select the theme with bat --theme="Thorn Forest" (or Thorn Field), or set it persistently via the BAT_THEME environment variable or in bat's config file.

For fzf, source the desired snippet from your shell rc (.bashrc, .zshrc, etc.):

source /path/to/thorn.nvim/extras/fzf/thorn-forest.sh
# or
source /path/to/thorn.nvim/extras/fzf/thorn-field.sh

The snippet appends --color= flags to FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS.

For delta, the files in extras/delta are gitconfig snippets that define a named delta feature. Install the matching bat theme first (delta uses it for syntax highlighting), then include the snippet from your gitconfig:

[include]
    path = /path/to/thorn.nvim/extras/delta/thorn-forest.gitconfig

[delta]
    features = thorn-forest

Swap thorn-forest for thorn-field for the light variant. Both snippets reference the matching Thorn Forest / Thorn Field bat tmTheme, so the bat extras must be installed and the cache rebuilt (bat cache --build) for delta's syntax highlighting to render correctly.