Codex CLI themes are genuinely unusable
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Feb 26, 2026 by immapolar Closed Feb 27, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
Codex CLI version:
0.105.0
Description:
The background key inside .tmTheme scope rules for markup.inserted, markup.deleted, and markup.changed is completely ignored. The diff view always renders with hardcoded bright red/green backgrounds regardless of what's defined in the custom theme file.
Impact:
Unusable for anyone with a custom terminal color scheme. The bright hardcoded backgrounds cause serious eye strain and make it impossible to read the highlighted code. My eyes are begging for mercy.
3 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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yep thats hardcoded in
codex-rs/tui/src/diff_render.rs. very badhttps://github.com/openai/codex/issues/12749#issuecomment-3965731433