Steampunk Foundry

Steampunk Foundry

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A steampunk theme for Obsidian: brass, copper and verdigris colors, railway-style indent guides, mechanical gears, gauge-plate callouts, and a day-and-night sky that flows across the tab bar. Every effect is off by default — turn on only what you want.

Day-and-night sky previews: Overall previews:

Changelog

1.0.0

First release: dark and light color schemes, file explorer and editor styling, mechanical decorations, day-and-night sky, performance presets and Style Settings options.

Features

Colors and fonts

• Two color schemes: a dark "boiler room" and a light "parchment blueprint".
• Bright brass (H1, emphasis, bold), brass (borders, table headers, buttons), copper (H2, folder names) and verdigris (H3, links) are all customizable.
• Heading, body and code fonts are customizable (enter a full font list, separated by commas).

Editor and content

• Heading levels, lists and indent lines, quotes, horizontal rules.
• Callouts → gauge plates.
• Tables → punched-tape ledgers.
• Code blocks → control panels with indicator lights on top and a line-number gutter on the left.
• Task lists → mechanical dial checkboxes.
• Tabs, sidebar frames and scrollbars.
• Layout adjustments for phones and tablets.

File explorer

• Indent guides become railway chains: double rails with crossbeams, a small gear at every item that spins on hover.
• Collapse arrows become gear arrows that rotate 90° and light up when expanded.
• Folder icons become riveted copper boxes. File icons depend on the file type: notes are mechanical dials, canvas a compass, pdf / base a punch card, images a lens, HTML angle brackets, audio a musical note, video a projector frame, code curly braces, archives a wooden crate, text and Office documents a sheet of paper, spreadsheets a grid.

Machinery and texture

• Background gear sets: a large and a small meshing gear at the top right of the editor, and a gear at the bottom of each sidebar. Opacity is adjustable.
• Scroll-linked gear: while you scroll or drag the scrollbar, a gear travels and spins along the right-hand rail.
• File name plate: the large title in the editor becomes a brass nameplate (turn on "Show inline title" in Settings → Editor → Appearance).
• Parchment background, steam haze (adjustable opacity), riveted frame, metallic shine.
• Brass buttons / tags / search boxes; links and selection colors use Obsidian variables, so they work in both light and dark.

Day-and-night sky

• The tab bar (optionally extended to the breadcrumb bar) shows a day-night cycle: the sun, moon and stars move over time.
• Daytime features a normal, pale, amber and blood-red sun, plus a partial and a total solar eclipse.
• Nighttime features moon phases and a supermoon, three nebula nights, green and purple auroras, a meteor shower, a comet, a partial lunar eclipse and a blood moon, plus four wonders: solar system, galaxy, black hole and star cluster.
• The schedule is a pre-baked 72-day program built into the theme; no plugin is needed.
• You can adjust the length of one day-night cycle and how much the sky is dimmed (raise it if tab text is hard to read).

Motion and performance

• Background motion is the master switch: when it is off, gears, steam, metallic shine and the sky all stay still.
• Performance preset: High quality (everything on), Balanced (celestial bodies at 30 fps; steam, metallic shine and the scroll-linked gear off), Power saving (also turns off full-window particles; celestial bodies drop to 10 fps).
• Celestial body (sun / moon) frame rate: 60 / 30 / 15 / 10 / 5 fps. Effect update rate (meteors, lightning, wonders): high / medium / low.

Languages

• The option names in Style Settings automatically follow Obsidian's language: English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese or Japanese. If Obsidian uses any other language, English is shown.
• To change the language, change it in Obsidian under Settings → General → Language (a theme cannot switch it on its own).

Content width

• By default, Obsidian's own content width is used.
• Your custom width is applied only after you turn on "Custom content width".

How to use

Getting started

1. Install the Style Settings plugin (recommended; all options live there).
2. Go to Settings → Appearance → Themes and choose Steampunk Foundry.
3. Open Style Settings → "Steampunk Foundry" and turn on the effects you want.

To see the day-and-night sky

1. Turn on "Background motion".
2. Turn on "Day-and-night sky on the tab bar and breadcrumb bar".
3. To stretch the sky to the breadcrumb bar, also turn on "Extend sky to the breadcrumb bar".

If it feels slow, or tab text is hard to read

• Large notes or low-end computers: set "Performance preset" to Balanced or Power saving.
• Tab text covered by the sky: raise "Sky dimming".

If the options appear in the wrong language

• Style Settings follows Obsidian's own language (Settings → General → Language). Other languages fall back to English.

If you use another icon plugin

• Keep "Folder and file icons" off to avoid duplicated icons.

Installation

Manual: download theme.css and manifest.json from the latest release, put them into <vault>/.obsidian/themes/Steampunk Foundry/, then choose the theme in Settings → Appearance. Installing the Style Settings plugin as well is recommended.

Notes

• No network requests, no telemetry, free.
• The day-and-night sky and animated backgrounds are drawn continuously. For large notes or low-end computers, set the performance preset to Balanced or Power saving.
• The file name plate requires "Show inline title" in Settings → Editor → Appearance.
• Mobile support is still experimental.

Issues and suggestions

If you run into a problem or have a suggestion, please open an issue on GitHub. Including your Obsidian version, your theme settings and steps to reproduce (or a screenshot) makes it much easier to help.