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Bliss

by itsjusthaif
Screenshot of the Bliss Obsidian theme
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Code

Description

This theme supports Dark Mode
This theme supports Light Mode

README file from

Github

Bliss banner

Obsidian, but it's 2001. Bevelled buttons, Luna blues and the gloriously boring look of the early web.

Bliss is a desktop theme for Obsidian that draws inspiration from the early web and classic Windows aesthetics. Glossy blues, soft greens, and a warm beige desktop create a familiar sense of nostalgia, while layouts echo the tidy structure of intranet portals and personal websites from the Y2K era. A slate dark mode is included for after-hours work. Bliss brings together retro charm and modern usability in a contemporary take on early 2000s design.

Inspired by: Fernando Borretti on X, boringpunk-notes-app

Contents

Screenshots

Light and dark modes

Light and dark

XP accent presets: Luna Blue, Olive Green, Silver, Zune, Embedded (New), plus two bonus Whistler pre-release schemes (Chartreuse Mongoose and Blue Lagoon, from the Mallard style). In dark mode Luna Blue becomes Royale Energy Blue and Silver becomes Royale Noir

Accent presets

Dark mode with extended dark styles: XP Royale Dark (New), Contrast, Midnight and Slate

Accent presets, dark

Windows XP Mode, on and off

Windows XP Mode off and on

Classic square corners, on and off

Classic square corners off and on

Callouts, tables and classic sunken Luna frame code blocks with VS-style syntax colours

Notes

Extended Style Settings

Controls

Installation

To install the theme

  • Open Obsidian Settings
  • Go to Appearance and click Manage
  • Under community themes search for "Bliss" and click Use

To install manually, download and copy theme.css and manifest.json into <vault>/.obsidian/themes/Bliss/, then select Bliss under Appearance.

Companion plugins

Settings

All options live in Style Settings under Bliss.

Setting What it does
Accent colour Luna Blue, Olive Green, Silver, Zune, Embedded, Whistler Chartreuse Mongoose, Whistler Blue Lagoon, or your Obsidian accent colour
Notes list background Light mode only: flat, warm paper or cream behind the Notebook Navigator list
Note background fade Light mode only: soft top-to-bottom tint behind the open note
Dark style Dark mode only: Auto (default, pairs Zune with XP Royale Dark and Embedded with Midnight, Slate for the rest), Slate, Midnight (deep blue-black with soft glow), Contrast (near-black with brighter borders, text and focus rings) or XP Royale Dark (neutral charcoal with glossy split-shine buttons)
Accents in light and dark Every accent works in both modes. Luna Blue becomes Royale Energy Blue and Silver becomes Royale Noir in dark mode; Zune and Embedded get their own dark styles through Auto
Interface text size 10 to 14 px for labels, buttons, sidebars and menus
Classic square corners Square boxes, pills and buttons for the original intranet look
Disable desk texture Removes the fine dot pattern from the window chrome and ribbon
Auto-hide status bar Slides the bottom-right status bar out of view; hover the corner to reveal it
Toggle switches follow the accent Off keeps the classic XP green for switched-on toggles
Windows XP Mode Taskbar-style gradients on pane headers, dialog title bars, primary buttons, sliders and the status bar (in the accent colour), plus sunset-orange strips on list date groups and Git sections. Off keeps the original look

Plugin support

Bliss styles these directly:

Most other plugins work, but are not themed specifically.

Customizing

To preview every element Bliss styles, copy docs/Bliss Theme Showcase.md into a vault.

Colours, gradients, radii and button states are CSS variables prefixed --bp- at the top of theme.css. Override them in a CSS snippet to change the look without editing the theme.

Development

Contributions are welcome. Fork the repo, branch from dev and open a pull request; only the owner merges and releases. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Command What it does
npm test CSS lint, static performance audit and a check that finished features are still present (also runs in CI)
npm run release-check Verifies manifest, changelog, tag and submission files agree (also runs in CI)
npm run live Contrast, clipping and hit-target audit; needs Obsidian running with --remote-debugging-port=9222
npm run parity Checks that dark mode has no light surfaces left; needs the same running Obsidian
npm run perf:live Runtime performance comparison; needs the same running Obsidian
npm run visual Screenshot comparison against local baselines (git-ignored); npm run visual:update resets them
npm run selectors Checks the Obsidian classes the theme depends on against the installed Obsidian; --write refreshes docs/internal-selectors.md
npm run task -- <name> and npm run ship Optional helpers for task branches and merging into dev; npm run setup enables the matching git hooks

Changelog

[1.3.0]

Added

  • Small controls: pale-yellow balloon notices and tooltips, XP-style segmented green progress bars, glossy task checkboxes with struck-through done items, blue list bullets and fold arrows, ring hover and pressed state on ribbon buttons, sticky-note highlights and pill footnote markers.
  • Style Settings: new accent colour Embedded, sampled from the Windows XP Embedded theme.
  • Style Settings: new Dark style option Auto (follows accent), now the default. Zune pairs with XP Royale Dark and Embedded with Midnight; every other accent keeps Slate. Picking a dark style yourself always overrides it.
  • Style Settings: new Dark style option XP Royale Dark, a neutral charcoal look with glossy split-shine buttons and tabs after the XP Royale theme.
  • Dark mode: Luna Blue now becomes Royale Energy Blue and Silver becomes Royale Noir, so each light accent now has an XP-era dark companion.
  • Style Settings: two bonus pre-release accents from Windows XP build 2419 (Whistler) "Mallard" style: Chartreuse Mongoose (green with golden highlights) and Blue Lagoon (teal with purple highlights).

Changed

  • Windows XP Nostalgia Mode is now called Windows XP Mode. Saved settings keep working.
  • Windows XP Mode now also turns the status bar into a taskbar strip in the chosen accent's colour, with flat items that press in only on click and sync status icons tinted to stay readable.
  • The Orange accent is now called Zune and uses the orange sampled from the XP Zune theme. Saved settings keep working.
  • The Silver accent is lighter and lavender-tinted, with light Metallic title bars and dark title text in light mode, closer to the XP Metallic theme.
  • Notes list background and Note background fade are now light mode only, because they made almost no visible difference in dark. Dark mode always uses its fixed list gradient and a flat note, and the option descriptions say so.

Fixed

  • Editing view: the underline below a heading is no longer covered by inline code in that heading.

See CHANGELOG.md for complete release notes.

License

Bliss is licensed under the MIT License. You may modify and redistribute it, but you must keep the copyright and license notice in your CSS file, including any code you extract as a standalone snippet.

Disclaimer

This theme is provided as is and is designed for my personal use of Obsidian on Windows. As such it is not thoroughly tested across all operating systems, use cases and plugins. This theme modifies significant parts of the Obsidian interface, so it may break with future updates. It may also be incompatible with other bits of custom CSS you have.

Made with ❤️ using Claude.

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