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An Old Hope

by banastas
Screenshot of the An Old Hope Obsidian theme
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Code

Description

This theme supports Dark Mode
This theme supports Light Mode

README file from

Github

An Old Hope for Obsidian

A dark Obsidian theme inspired by a galaxy far, far away, porting the An Old Hope palette to modern Obsidian with styled Markdown, callouts, graph view, canvas, and editor syntax.

Preview

An Old Hope Obsidian theme preview

An Old Hope keeps the original editor theme's backbone: deep charcoal backgrounds, warm off-white text, red keywords/actions, cyan links and strings, yellow headings/functions, green Markdown/code accents and bold emphasis, orange accents, and purple constants. Green gives bold prose a strong, readable skim signal without competing with headings or making ordinary emphasis look like an alert.

Galactic graph view

Global and local graphs become a dedicated night-mode cartography display in both app color modes. Native Obsidian nodes and links remain fully interactive above a CSS-only star field, concentric range rings, center bearings, scanlines, and a restrained CRT vignette. Focused notes read as warm navigation targets, tags and attachments retain their semantic palette colors, and the graph settings use a compact navigation-computer panel.

The wider interface borrows only the motifs that improve hierarchy: telemetry-style status text, a cyan instrument edge on transient panels, monospaced callout headers, and schematic framing for Canvas controls. Document surfaces remain quiet and readable instead of turning every note into a cockpit prop.

Install

Manual install

  1. Download this repository.

  2. Copy manifest.json and theme.css into this folder in your vault:

    <your-vault>/.obsidian/themes/An Old Hope/

  3. Restart Obsidian if this is the first install or if manifest.json changed.

  4. Open Settings -> Appearance -> Themes and choose An Old Hope.

Development install

From your vault's theme directory, clone the repository into a folder named exactly An Old Hope:

cd /path/to/your-vault/.obsidian/themes
git clone https://github.com/banastas/an-old-hope-obsidian-theme.git "An Old Hope"

Obsidian expects the theme folder name to match the name in manifest.json.

Files

  • manifest.json: Obsidian theme metadata.
  • theme.css: the complete Obsidian theme.
  • scripts/validate-obsidian-theme.mjs: a lightweight validation check for the theme package.

Development

Run the validation check before publishing:

npm test

The validator checks that the manifest matches the expected Obsidian theme shape, the original An Old Hope palette is present, key Obsidian selectors and variables exist, the CSS has balanced braces/comments/strings, and text-bearing purple roles meet WCAG AA contrast in both color modes.

Credits

The An Old Hope palette began with Jesse Leite's original Atom syntax theme. Bill Anastas used that Atom theme as the base for the VS Code and Sublime ports, and this Obsidian version was created from those ports.

This repository adapts that lineage for Obsidian's modern theme CSS, including the app shell, Markdown editor, reading view, callouts, graph view, canvas, and editor syntax.

License

MIT

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