How to Quickly Cycle Between Sublime Text Color Schemes

If you use more than one color scheme in Sublime Text, for example Solarized (Light) during the day and Solarized (Dark) at night, here’s a simple plugin to make switching between them as painless as possible. Instead of having to click and hover through Sublime Text > Preferences > Color Scheme > Color Scheme - Default > {your_color_scheme}, you can simply bind some keys to cycle through a series of color schemes of your choice.

First, create a file called cycle_color_scheme.py, and put it in Packages/User. Here’s mine:

import sublime, sublime_plugin

class CycleColorSchemeCommand(sublime_plugin.TextCommand):
    def run(self, edit, **kwargs):

        preferences = sublime.load_settings('Preferences.sublime-settings')
        scheme = self.view.settings().get("color_scheme")

        try:
            schemes = kwargs.get("color_schemes")
            i = schemes.index(scheme)
            preferences.set(
                'color_scheme', schemes[ (i+1) % len(schemes) ])
        except ValueError:
            print("Your current color scheme doesn't match any of your args.")
        except Exception:
            print("Something went wrong.")

Then, add the following to your Default (OSX).sublime-keymap, also in the Packages/User directory. Put your favorite color schemes in the color_schmes list. These need to be entered as relative paths to color scheme files: {color_scheme}.tmTheme.

{
    // ...
    
    "keys": ["super+shift+c"], "command": "cycle_color_scheme",
    "args": { "color_schemes": [
        "Packages/User/SublimeLinter/Solarized (Light) (SL).tmTheme",
        "Packages/User/SublimeLinter/Solarized (Dark) (SL).tmTheme",
        "Packages/User/SublimeLinter/Monokai (SL).tmTheme"
      ]
    }

    // ...
}

If you use SublimeLinter, any color scheme you use will get copied into Packages/User/SublimeLinter, and you’re set. If not, you can use something like Colorsublime to download themes, and put them somewhere in Packages/User.