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Ian Hill edited this page Aug 13, 2013 · 25 revisions

Theme Display Issues

When you change or update your theme, Sublime Text does its best to dynamically load and apply the new theme.

If during this process, Sublime Text has trouble cleanly reloading assets or updating the UI parameters to the new theme settings, you may see visual rendering artefacts where theme backgrounds are not redrawn or updated correctly via the dynamic reload mechanism.

After changing or updating a UI theme, a simple way to ensure the theme is applied properly, is to shut down and restart Sublime Text

Check Ignored Packages

A second area to check is your Ignore Packages list in your User Preferences file.

Sublime Text will move a package into this area temporarily when updating the package. In some scenarios, it will fail to move the package back out of the ignored list when the update is complete, causing the package to not be available for use.

Check that the theme is not in the ignored packages list

Open your User Preferences file Sublime Text -> Preferences -> Settings - User, and remove any entry for Soda Theme if one exists in the ignored packages array.

Example of incorrect settings

"ignored_packages":
[
	"Theme - Soda"
]

Working out the problem

If that doesn't work, a good debugging technique is to open the Sublime console CTRL + ` when loading or changing a theme and look for any errors. If Sublime can't find assets related to the theme, or there is another theme related issue, you may see useful output in the console that helps resolve the issue.

Open the Sublime console with CTRL + ` and look for theme related asset loading errors

Examples of theme issues

Below are some common examples and troubleshooting steps if you are experiencing display problems when applying or updating a theme.

Entire Theme Displays Red

If you have copied the Soda Theme folder to the wrong location, the theme will not be able to load its assets and you will see red backgrounds for all components.

To fix this issue, make sure the theme is located inside the Sublime Text Packages directory with the correct folder name. You can find the Packages directory by using the menu item Preferences -> Browse Packages...

Broken theme

Some Components Display Red or Appear Distorted

During theme upgrades, if a theme asset has changed names or was moved (or removed), it is possible that Sublime Text's dynamic theme reloading may not pick up the change cleanly and consider the asset missing or unchanged.

In those cases, you will see red backgrounds for assets incorrectly interpreted as missing, or visually distorted components for theme assets that have changed, but not been cleanly reloaded by Sublime Text 2.

To correct this issue, you need to "force refresh" the theme. The simplest way to do that is to shut down Sublime Text and then restart it, which will work in most circumstances

Incorrectly declared theme

Check to make sure that you have used the "theme" property for activating the theme in your Sublime Text -> Preferences -> Settings - User file (or other configuration files), and not accidentally used the incorrect "color_scheme" property.

Also ensure that you do not set your editors syntax highlighting colour scheme to use any of the themes internal colour scheme files. These files are referenced by the theme itself and should not be configured or referenced in your settings.

The following declaration (in this case, for Soda Light) is the correct way to configure the theme:

{
    "theme": "Soda Light.sublime-theme"
}

For Sublime Text 3, the theme configuration is:

{
    "theme": "Soda Light 3.sublime-theme"
}

Other potential issues

Some users reporting rendering issues have found that there was an older copy of the theme either in their Packages/User folder or another location. Having this additional, older version was causing Sublime Text to load both theme copies and mix the rules together, causing odd visual results.

Check that there is only one copy of the theme files and that they are in the correct location