Themes

pitop ships with three built-in color themes and supports fully custom themes via the config file.

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Built-in themes

Default

The default theme uses bright, distinct colors optimized for dark terminal backgrounds:

• Green/yellow/red gauge colors for threshold levels
• Blue sparklines for CPU, magenta for memory, red for temperature
• Cyan highlighted borders for the active section
• Yellow titles and white text

Monochrome

A theme using only white and gray shades. Useful for:

• Terminals with limited color support
• High-contrast accessibility
• Screenshots and documentation

Solarized

A theme based on the Solarized Dark color palette. Uses the standard Solarized base and accent colors:

• Base0/base01 for text
• Solarized blue, green, yellow, red, magenta for accents
• Base02 for highlight backgrounds

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Switching themes

At runtime

Press t to cycle through available themes: default -> monochrome -> solarized -> (custom, if defined) -> default.

Via CLI

pitop --theme solarized

Via config file

[general]
theme = "solarized"

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Custom themes

Define a custom theme in the config file under [custom_theme]. All fields are optional -- any field you omit falls back to the default theme's color.

Available color fields

General

Field	Description	Default
border	Border color for panels	white
border_highlight	Highlighted/active border	cyan
title	Title text color	yellow
text	Normal text color	white
text_dim	Dimmed/secondary text	darkgray
highlight_bg	Background for selected items	darkgray

Gauges

Field	Description	Default
gauge_low	Gauge fill below warning	green
gauge_warn	Gauge fill at warning level	yellow
gauge_crit	Gauge fill at critical level	red

Sparklines

Field	Description	Default
sparkline_cpu	CPU sparkline color	blue
sparkline_mem	Memory sparkline color	magenta
sparkline_temp	Temperature sparkline color	red
sparkline_power	Power sparkline color	yellow

Section borders

Field	Description	Default
cpu_border	CPU section border	blue
mem_border	Memory section border	magenta
temp_border	Temperature section border	green
net_border	Network section border	green
power_border	Power section border	yellow

Status indicators

Field	Description	Default
throttle_ok	No throttle events	green
throttle_warn	Past throttle events	yellow
throttle_crit	Active throttling	red

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Color format

Colors can be specified as:

• Named colors: red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta, white, gray, darkgray
• Hex RGB: "#RRGGBB" format (e.g., "#FF8800", "#2AA198")

Example custom theme

[general]
theme = "custom"

[custom_theme]
border = "cyan"
border_highlight = "#FF8800"
title = "#FF8800"
text = "white"
text_dim = "gray"
highlight_bg = "#1A1A2E"
gauge_low = "#00FF00"
gauge_warn = "#FFAA00"
gauge_crit = "#FF0000"
sparkline_cpu = "#4488FF"
sparkline_mem = "#FF44FF"
sparkline_temp = "#FF4444"
sparkline_power = "#FFAA44"
cpu_border = "#4488FF"
mem_border = "#FF44FF"
temp_border = "#44FF44"
net_border = "#44FF44"
power_border = "#FFAA44"
throttle_ok = "#00FF00"
throttle_warn = "#FFAA00"
throttle_crit = "#FF0000"

Tip

You do not need to specify every field. Only override the colors you want to change:

[general]
theme = "custom"

[custom_theme]
title = "#FF8800"
sparkline_cpu = "cyan"

All other fields will use the default theme's colors.

Warning

Setting theme = "custom" without defining a [custom_theme] section will produce a validation error. Use pitop --config-check to verify your config.