DEV Community: Michael Kühnel

Introducing »Relaxed« 1.0.0 for Zed

Michael Kühnel — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 18:19:00 +0000

The Relaxed theme is now available for Zed. Version 1.0.0 brings the calm colors you might have enjoyed in your terminal and VS Code to the blazingly fast, Rust-powered editor.

Backstory

Back in 2018 I released the »Relaxed Theme«, a color scheme I had fine-tuned for my terminal over quite a while. A Visual Studio Code version followed shortly after and has been used by me and many others for almost a decade.

Today I'm happy to announce that »Relaxed Theme« has shipped as version 1.0.0 for Zed 🎉

How I ended up here

I stumbled upon Zed a while ago and got curious. I played around a bit and began configuring it to my needs (pretty much in a VS Code style). After some basic settings, tossing panels from one side to the other and installing just one additional extension, I was quite taken with it.

After scrolling through settings.json, some additional minor tweaks here and there and using Zed as my primary work tool, I became a fan.

The built-in »One Dark« theme is more than okay. But of course I dug through third-party themes and discovered that Stefan Cosma had already ported »Relaxed« to Zed. What a pleasant surprise.

So I invited Stefan to the Relaxed-Theme organization on GitHub, where the port now lives next to the terminal and VS Code versions, and started polishing. Now I'm really happy to use Zed exactly the way I want it to feel.

What's new in 1.0.0

The goal was simple: if you know »Relaxed Theme« from VS Code, it should feel exactly the same in Zed. Stefan's port was a great starting point, but Zed highlights code a little differently, so here and there a color didn't match and the theme felt slightly off.

Version 1.0.0 closes that gap. Your code looks the way you know it from VS Code, diffs and merge conflicts are easy to read, and the UI got a bit calmer and easier on the eyes.

Installation

Open Extensions in Zed (cmd-shift-x on macOS)
Search for Relaxed
Click Install
Open the theme picker (cmd-k cmd-t) and select Relaxed

That's it. Or check the Zed extension page and the repository on GitHub.

In action

TypeScript / React:

Sass:

Python:

Rust:

You'll find more examples (JSON, HTML, Markdown, diffs and merge conflicts) in the README.

Make it yours

If you'd like to change a color without forking the theme, Zed lets you override single values in your settings.json:

"theme_overrides": {
  "Relaxed": {
    "search.match_background": "#ebc17a40"
  }
}

The full list of available keys is in the theme documentation.

That's it for now. Thanks again to Stefan for getting the ball rolling. If something looks funky, please open an issue. Pull requests are welcome as well :octocat:

ibrew 🍻– Interactive CLI to install Homebrew packages

Michael Kühnel — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 03:35:53 +0000

I’ve build something for lazy and slow typing folks like me:
An interactive CLI to browse Homebrew search results and choose a package to install.

See https://github.com/mischah/ibrew and leave a star if you like it 😘

Introducing »Relaxed« – A cross platform terminal theme

Michael Kühnel — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 19:22:32 +0000

I've invested a lot of time in optimizing my development environment and workspace — and typefaces and color schemes are a large part of that. For me different color schemes (as well as typefaces) both set the mood for my development environment, as well as offer utility in the way that I parse text.

I fine-tuned my iTerm theme for quite a while and recently released it as cross platform theme which is available for Hyper, iTerm, macOS Terminal, Konsole, PuTTY, Terminator, Termite, Xfce Terminal and Xresources 🕶️

Check https://github.com/mischah/Relaxed to get it.

All colors:

In action:

Update:

Now also available as theme for Visual Studio Code:

Update:

Now also available as theme for Zed: