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Lifein — Make Obsidian Look the Way You Like

Lifein isn't just a recolor theme — it's a fully tunable interface system. Colors, layout, sidebar, typography, the properties panel, and plugin appearance all live in a single settings panel. Go minimal when you want minimal; go textured when you want texture.

Built on a Glassmorphism visual language and deeply integrated with Style Settings, Lifein is made for focused writing. Less is more: let the interface quietly step back behind your content, and let your notes take center stage.

1 ✨ Key Features

1.1 🪟 Unified Glassmorphism Visuals

Menus, the command palette, popovers, tooltips, and the Style Settings panel all share one consistent "frosted glass" treatment: semi-transparent backgrounds + background blur + a subtle saturation boost + a 1px hairline border + rounded corners. We use only a single layer of glass to avoid the cheap "window-in-window" feel; blur intensity and opacity can be fine-tuned via Style Settings.

1.2 🎛 Deeply Integrated Style Settings

The theme ships two major settings blocks and a dozen-plus groups — nearly every detail is adjustable — and the settings panel itself has been reworked (horizontal layout + Lucide icons + the theme's green buttons) to look as good as it works:

Colors & Theme: theme palette, background glass density / blur / saturation, and more.
Layout & Navigation: title & status bar, Banner, sidebar, sidebar on hover.
Editing & Typography: text, inline elements (quote bar · tags · links), lists, tables.
Popovers & Interaction: command palette, menus, page preview.
Core Views & Components: properties panel, Bases.
Community Plugin Styles: Dataview, Calendar, Dust Calendar, Tasks, Kanban, and more.

Installing the community plugin Style Settings is recommended to unlock all adjustments; the theme works fine with its default look even without it.

1.3 🎨 Ten Color Schemes (One-Click Reskin)

A built-in "derivation engine" generates the entire interface — backgrounds, text, sidebar, color blocks, code highlighting, and semantic colors — from a single seed color plus a set of saturation ceilings. Switching a scheme = switching the seed hue; the whole theme recolors itself, with no need to hand-tune dozens of variables.

10 presets: Follow Accent Color (= default behavior) / Plain White / Warm Sand / Forest / Teal / Indigo / Jade Black / Rose / Graphite / Pure Black AMOLED.
Independent light & dark: light and dark schemes are chosen separately (the community-standard approach) — the same color reads very differently on light vs. dark backgrounds, so separating them lets you tune accurately; "Pure Black · AMOLED" drives the background to true black in dark mode, saving power with a purer look.
Accent color included: aside from "Follow Accent Color", every other scheme takes over the global accent — buttons, links, and selection states all follow the scheme; if you've explicitly chosen a color under Settings → Appearance → Accent Color, that choice wins and the scheme steps aside.

1.4 🧘 Two Focus Modes (Independent)

Full Focus Mode: triggered when you enable Obsidian's native "Focus Mode". Automatically hides the main tab bar / per-page title bar / status bar (revealed on hover), centers the editor (720px + top padding), and dims inactive panes to minimize distraction.
Light Focus Mode: a standalone lightweight focus mode. Hides tabs / title bar / status bar / properties heading / title-bar buttons / scrollbar, with smooth fade in/out transitions, and can be bound to a hotkey for one-key toggle in Style Settings.

1.5 📱 Cupertino-style Floating Sidebar

A macOS-inspired semi-transparent floating sidebar with customizable background color and toggle, matching the theme's overall glass aesthetic.

1.6 🌗 Automatic Light/Dark Inversion

Full light / dark support. Dark mode is achieved by inverting a whole group of variables, so there's no need to maintain two separate color sets.

1.7 🧩 Community Plugin Support

Common community plugins are styled and tucked in neatly: Dataview, Calendar, Dust Calendar, Tasks, Kanban — works out of the box and stays unobtrusive.

1.8 🗂 Bases View Support

The Core Views & Components group includes dedicated styling for Obsidian Bases.

2 📸 Screenshots

Light mode Dark mode Glassmorphism

3 📦 Installation

3.1 Option 1: Obsidian Community Theme

Open Obsidian → Settings → Appearance.
Click "Manage" → find Lifein in the theme list → enable it.

3.2 Option 2: Manual Installation

Download theme.css from this repository.
In your vault, create the directory .obsidian/themes/Lifein/.
Place theme.css inside it (final path: your-vault/.obsidian/themes/Lifein/theme.css).
Restart Obsidian → Settings → Appearance → Theme → select Lifein.

3.3 Customization (Optional)

Install the Style Settings community plugin.
Go to Settings → Community Plugins → Style Settings (or the command palette "Style Settings") to see all of Lifein's adjustable options.

3.4 Reading the Source (Optional)

theme.css in this repository is intentionally minified — it ships as a single line of CSS (plus the verbatim Style Settings @settings blocks) to stay well under the theme size limit. This costs you nothing in adjustability: every option still lives in the Style Settings panel.

If you'd rather read the code, the fully commented original ships right next to it as theme.source.css — 16,000+ lines, with a section banner and an explanation above nearly every block. Install with theme.css; read and fork from theme.source.css.

4 🔧 Compatibility & Notes

Obsidian v1.7 or above is recommended (required for Bases and the newer Style Settings).
The theme works on its own without any plugins; Style Settings only unlocks visual adjustments.

5 📄 License

This theme is released under the MIT License. The full terms are in the LICENSE file at the repository root.

6 🙏 Acknowledgments

Underwater theme: the idea and implementation of Light Focus Mode were referenced from it.
Baseline theme: reference for refined layout and the floating sidebar.
Border theme: reference for heading styles.
Minimal theme: reference for the multi-block Style Settings structure, Dataview styles, and progress bars.
The official Obsidian default theme and community provided the foundation and inspiration.

Lifein

Description

README file from