Add a new editor theme

[YeldhamDev]

Is with great pleasure that I present you, Godot's soon-to-be new default theme!

This is a 1:1 port of @passivestar's Minimal Theme, with himself also helping us behind the curtains in order to facilitate the porting work. The editor font used is now Inter, and the new theme also changes the editor's base color and accent. While the blue tint had become a staple of Godot’s look over the past years, it caused issues such as distorting the perceived white balance of the viewport. Switching to a neutral gray resolves this.

But for those who still liked the older look better, fret not, As the old theme and color preset is still available, for you to pick! They can be accessed by choosing "Classic" in the interface/theme/style and interface/theme/preset settings.

While this PR is in a merge-able state, some small things still need to be worked on:

• Nested TabContainers blend with each other.
• The disabled tab style is a placeholder, while waiting for passive to implement it.
• PopupMenus still look very squarish, as Make per_pixel_transparency always enabled in the editor #106324 still needs to be resolved.

Feedback is more than welcome, but please, keep it civil. Topics involving theming and design are very subjective, so the more objective information you can provide about your issues the easier it will be to address them in future PRs.

[arkology]

Topics involving theming and design are very subjective, so the more objective information you can provide about your issues the easier it will be to address them in future PRs.

I know this is subjective, but: OptionButton in top left corner ("ArcadeMachine") has too big margins compared to all other Controls. Same is valid for "Add Metadata" button.
These aspects stopped me from using this theme as custom theme (and as I remember v1.0 has no such big margins)

[Yagich]

soon-to-be new default

was this decided somewhere? there's no linked proposal (nor could i find one that this issue specifically addresses except maybe godotengine/godot-proposals#8264)

how does this interact with light theme? is there a light variant of this or is the light theme going to revert to the default spacings?

[KoBeWi]

As I already mentioned in our internal discussion, the theme makes various elements lose distinction by blending their background with surroundings. Some examples:

Scene dock (no background, the tree looks like it was disabled or something)

Old	New

Debugger (there is a big space that looks completely empty)

Old	New

Inspector (categories blend with properties)

Old	New

Create dialog (the list just starts out of nowhere)

Old	New

TileSet editor (a bunch of random elements hanging in the air)

Old	New

This makes the editor less readable. It needs to be resolved before the theme can be considered for default.

EDIT:
I realized I had a custom color scheme. The theme style switched to the new one, but with old colors, which makes it look worse. The default colors improve some elements, but most problems still stand.

[YeldhamDev]

@Yagich

how does this interact with light theme? is there a light variant of this or is the light theme going to revert to the default spacings?

The current color presets are all there, including the light theme.

[Giganzo]

Font is changed to Inter. What about visual consistency across languages compared to Noto Sans?

[bruvzg]

What about visual consistency across languages compared to Noto Sans?

Metrics seems similar, so should not be an issue. But we probably should allow overriding language specific fonts (not as part of this PR, I'll look at it a bit later).

[YeldhamDev]

@KoBeWi That actually seems to be a regression from another PR. Notice how the theme names don't have spaces anymore in your video, while the code that checks them does.

[DeeJayLSP]

Related: godotengine/godot-proposals#9012

[F3der1co]

These are difficult to discuss as it can quickly get opinionated and subjective, but I feel like the value of the grey color is a bit too dark.
This causes a similar issue to the white balance but for relative value contrast. It also makes switching to different content, like previewing the game, to have potential for a larger sudden increase in brightness, which can be painful/take time to adjust.
So I would suggest moving the default grey from the current 15% to 20%.

[KerekesDavid]

As I already mentioned in our internal discussion, the theme makes various elements lose distinction by blending their background with surroundings. Some examples:
...

As someone who's been using this theme for years, I consider the lower visual noise on the scene dock, debugger and inspector panels an upside. It's just as jarring to see the current design after being used to the minimal theme as it is the other way around.

I agree that the other two could definitely use some love. Although the tileset editor looks kinda random in both themes.

[DeeJayLSP]

Related: godotengine/godot-proposals#9012

If it isn't much to suggest, would be good to have ss02 (disambiguation, enables uppercase i with serif, lowercase L with tail and slashed zero) defined as it fixes the biggest complain certain FOSS projects have when it comes to adopting Inter.

Screenshot from the Inter website:

[akien-mga]

Great work @YeldhamDev and @passivestar, and everyone reviewing so far!

This seems in a pretty good state to merge now and get more testing. The PR is already quite big and handling all remaining feedback in a big PR is cumbersome.

So we're aware that some feedback is still unaddressed, but let's keep track of it in dedicated issues and fix it in follow-up PRs, so we can fine tune the details and ensure most users are satisfied with the new theme by the time 4.6-stable releases.

Merging this now means that the first version will be available in the upcoming 4.6-dev3 snapshot, but again further work will be done during the dev (and maybe beta) phase to polish it up.

[Repiteo]

Thanks! Excellent job to everyone involved for bringing this together!

[braids]

Hey, why is this becoming the new theme? Why are we removing the darker inner BG of these UI elements so they're one giant flat color with no visual breakup? Look at the input map dialogue in this comment, the list of all the inputs and the dropdowns have all the elements the same color in the new theme! They were visually distinct before!

[KoBeWi]

The new theme will be iterated based on feedback.
And switching to the old theme is still an option, it won't be removed.

[braids]

Making a theme default is tacit endorsement of the design of that theme. I don't wish for future design choices to be based off of this theme.

[shakesoda]

this really, really should not be the default theme yet. without going into nitpicking everything, read and consistency are fairly significantly worse across the board.

[HexDOTexe]

Without getting caught up in my own personal nitpicks with this chosen theme (of which I have many), I would hope that function and usability remains the primary factor by which any default theme is selected.

Functionally, there appears to be a loss in effective screen real estate for many elements, as they now take up more space than before. And as pointed out a moment ago, the new Input Map is simply a downgrade. I can't see a good argument for this as it currently exists.

As a positive, I like the new scene and file browser list density, as they both display more items than before in the same space. (Would still prefer a return of a darker background element to help distinguish the item list, though.)

Subjectively, I find this new theme quite difficult to look at. I find this shade of color to be very disagreeable, and I can't recall a time in any software I've ever used where a dark mode theme was similar to this tone. Again, this is a subjective complaint, but I also would argue that a theme based around a highlighter yellow base would not be a great default choice either. Personally, I think a color selection closer to the existing default theme would help a lot.

[Giganzo]

Here are some other potential problems:

Nodes blend in with the background:

Old theme looks like this with same colors:

Some elements alignment are different (old, but more visible now):

Old theme:

[coppolaemilio]

Now that this has been merged, you should create new issues instead of continue commenting in this PR. Otherwise, some of the feedback might end up falling through the cracks.

[braids]

Some of this feedback was already in the thread for a month, like the concerns about the solid-color backgrounds. Why do I have to make a new issue when it was ignored? Additionally, where was it decided that this would be the new theme? That comment still hasn't been addressed.

I don't think it's wise to barrel forward with a large UI change that most of the userbase won't be aware of until it's out! I only just became aware an hour after it was merged.

[Giganzo]

Creating new issues for problems that still exists. will cost time that could have been spent better.

Think this process could have been handled better. Like a proposal where a discussion of what needs to improve, why etc, to get the best result.

@braids we'll make sure to personally ask you before making any change in the engine, my apologies 🫡

That comment feels a bit unnecessary.

We all want to get best the result here. Hopefully that's where we end up when this is done :)

[braids]

@braids we'll make sure to personally ask you before making any change in the engine, my apologies 🫡

Thank you, I left you an issue over here: #112229

[aaronfranke]

Why not call it "minimal" instead of "modern"? The word "modern" is a nebulous term akin to "updated".

[NicholasBolen]

Could we have a project tracker for issues/PRs related to this? I'm not sure how they're usually handled but would find it helpful for seeing progress and preventing overlap.

So far, I've seen:

• Modern style theme changed Compatibility and Mobile colors #112234
• Issues with the new default editor theme #112229 (incomplete)
• Buttons in modern styled themes draw too much attention #112232
  • Fix resource picker button style #112243

[radosmn]

Although it looks slick, but the blending of menus and tabs and lists is confusing, I hope in the next version we can differentiate, like in scene tab we can still have trees lines between parent child nodes, and different color gradient to separate each menu or submenus.

[Mickeon]

Do note for anyone reading this, we are keeping track of all issues opened about the new theme. So, although it's being repeated constantly, it would be beneficial to the community as a whole to open unique, individual issues to provide specific feedback about the new theme and discuss potential solutions.
We'll always be aware that, because this is such a fundamental change, the new theme will always be quite upsetting to some. Still, try to be constructive in your criticism.
The existing Godot theme isn't lost and is available to choose in the editor settings, as a preset.

Side note, this PR has the potential to uncover certain omissions with "custom themes" as a whole, which personally has me confident it's going to make the general UX more consistent going forward!