dotfiles/assets/alacritty/README.md

Alacritty + system appearance (macOS)

Alacritty follows System Settings → Appearance automatically. No darwin-rebuild when you change light/dark.

How it works

1. Home Manager installs Catppuccin palettes as ~/.config/alacritty/catppuccin-{latte,mocha}-colors.toml and a generated alacritty.toml that sets general.import to active-colors.toml.
2. scripts/alacritty-sync-system-theme.sh copies the matching palette to active-colors.toml. Alacritty’s live_config_reload picks it up immediately.
3. nix-darwin runs that script from a user LaunchAgent every 30s (nixos/hosts/daniel-macbook-air.nix: launchd.user.agents.alacritty-system-theme). It is also installed on PATH as alacritty-sync-system-theme.
4. Fish runs the same script in the background when you open an interactive shell on Darwin, so changes apply quickly without waiting for the next poll.

Optional manual LaunchAgent

If you are not using the nix-darwin agent, you can load assets/launchd/com.user.alacritty-theme-sync.plist (adjust paths if needed). Do not load both the nix-darwin agent and this plist or you will run two pollers.

If you previously used the old plist label com.user.alacritty-theme-sync and switch to nix-darwin only:

launchctl bootout "gui/$(id -u)" ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.alacritty-theme-sync.plist 2>/dev/null || true

theme command (Neovim / WSL)

The fish alias theme still updates ~/.local/share/nvim_color_scheme (and Windows Terminal on WSL). On macOS, Alacritty ignores theme light|dark for terminal colors—it only follows System Settings. Neovim stays on whatever you set with theme; the Alacritty sync script does not touch the nvim file.

theme light    # Neovim (+ WSL terminal); macOS Alacritty unchanged (uses Appearance)
theme dark
theme toggle
theme status

Files

• assets/alacritty/catppuccin-latte-colors.toml / catppuccin-mocha-colors.toml — palette fragments
• scripts/alacritty-sync-system-theme.sh — detect macOS appearance, copy palette, refresh nvim marker
• scripts/sync-alacritty-theme.sh — thin wrapper (backwards compatible)
• nixos/home/danny/home.nix — programs.alacritty + xdg.configFile for palettes
• nixos/hosts/daniel-macbook-air.nix — LaunchAgent + alacritty-sync-system-theme in environment.systemPackages
• nixos/fish.nix — optional shell-open sync on Darwin

After changing Nix config, run darwin-rebuild switch once (see repo AGENTS.md).

Theme colors

Catppuccin Latte (Light)

• Background: #eff1f5 (base)
• Foreground: #4c4f69 (text)

Catppuccin Mocha (Dark)

• Background: #1e1e2e (base)
• Foreground: #cdd6f4 (text)