Appearance Modes
The Appearance control sits in the top toolbar, next to Language, and shows the active mode (for example Appearance: Dark). Click it to choose between three modes:
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Dark | Low-light workshop palette. The default. |
| Light | Drafting-paper palette for bright environments. |
| System | Follows your OS light/dark setting and switches automatically when it changes. |
The same menu has a Manage themes… item that opens the Theme Manager for custom themes — see below.
Theme Manager
Manage themes… opens a dialog listing every theme — the two built-ins (Dark, Light) plus any custom themes you've created. Selecting a theme in the list shows its details: whether it's the currently active theme, whether it's built-in or custom, and its color family.
Built-in themes are read-only. Duplicate to edit makes an editable copy under a new name, which unlocks Edit, Rename, Export theme, and Delete theme for that copy. Import theme loads a theme file someone else exported.
System Mode Pairing
A MODE control lets you pin a theme as a Fixed theme (always active) or set it to Follow system light/dark — useful if you've built a custom light and a custom dark theme and want PureCut CNC to switch between them the same way System appearance does.
Custom Theme Editor
Edit on a custom theme opens the theme editor: a name field, a Based on X · N colors changed counter, and every color token grouped by area —
- Surfaces — panel and app backgrounds, popovers, inputs.
- Text — primary and muted text, status bar text, text on accent.
- Borders & Controls — borders, button gradients, pressed/hover states, shadows.
- Accent & Status — accent/focus color, positive/warning/danger, and the toolpath cut/rapid/plunge/direction colors.
- Sketch Roles — semantic colors for line, region, and construction features.
- Sketch Canvas, Canvas Geometry, Canvas Controls, Canvas Toolpaths, Canvas Annotations — every canvas-drawn color, from grid lines to dimension annotations.
- 3D & Simulation — 3D viewport background, origin gizmo, tool and toolpath overlay colors.
Each field is a color picker with a Reset to base value button, so you can tweak a handful of colors without losing track of what changed from the theme you started from.
Live Preview & Readability Checks
A preview panel on the side of the editor renders sample panel text, buttons, status messages, and a small sketch canvas swatch using your in-progress colors, so you see the effect immediately without applying anything. Below it, a Readability Checks panel runs automated contrast spot-checks against representative UI states and reports how many pass — a guardrail against picking colors that look fine in isolation but make text unreadable in context.
Cancel discards changes; Apply theme saves them and makes the theme active.
Where Themes Apply
Theming covers the whole application, not just the chrome around the canvas: application UI, the sketch canvas palette, the 3D viewport and simulation colors, and print output all read from the same theme tokens. The built-in palette also moved from the earlier orange accent to a blue accent scheme as part of this migration, so custom themes built against the old palette may want a quick pass through Accent & Status.