Themes and display

You can change how o4 looks and which keys trigger its actions. Most of these settings are in two tabs of the settings panel: Appearance for the theme and display options, and Keys for Vim mode and key bindings. Changes you make there are saved for every future session.

Open the settings

Run /config with the name of the tab you want:

/config appearance

/config keys

Move to a row with Up and Down, and press Enter to change it. Most rows switch between on and off; the Theme row moves to the next theme. Press Tab to switch tabs, and Esc to close the panel. Each change is saved as soon as you make it.

Themes

Choose a theme with the Theme row in /config appearance. Each press of Enter moves to the next theme and applies it at once, so you can see it before you close the panel. The rows under Preview are sample labels for a user message, a reply and two status markers. In 0.2.74 they use the panel’s normal text color, so they don’t show the theme’s message or status colors.

Theme	Description
`auto`	The default. Uses your terminal’s own foreground and background colors, and picks light or dark colors for the rest to match.
`terminal`	The same as `auto`. If your terminal doesn’t report its colors, o4 guesses light or dark from environment variables instead; see below.
`dark`, `light`	o4’s own dark and light themes.
`dark-daltonized`, `light-daltonized`	Dark and light themes for color-blind users.
`dark-ansi`, `light-ansi`	Use only the 16 standard terminal colors, for terminals with limited color support.
`catppuccin-mocha`, `catppuccin-latte`, `dracula`, `nord`, `gruvbox-dark`, `gruvbox-light`, `tokyo-night`, `solarized-dark`, `solarized-light`, `kanagawa`, `everforest`, `one-dark`, `monokai`, `ayu-dark`, `nightfox`, `rose-pine`, `rose-pine-moon`, `material-palenight`	Themes based on popular editor color schemes.

The setup wizard offers a shorter list: Dark, Light, Catppuccin Mocha, Dracula, Nord, and Rosé Pine. o4 saves the theme as theme in ~/.o4/settings.json. You can also set it there by hand:

{
  "theme": "tokyo-night"
}

An unknown theme name falls back to dark. With auto, o4 asks the terminal for its colors when it starts. If the terminal doesn’t answer, o4 guesses light or dark from, in order: COLORFGBG (a background color number of 8 or more means light), the terminal named in TERM_PROGRAM (Apple Terminal is judged from TERM, iTerm2 and Ghostty count as dark), a TERM value that contains light or dark, and in the VS Code terminal, a VSCODE_THEME that contains light. Otherwise it uses dark colors. If the guess is wrong, pick light or dark yourself.

Terminal colors

o4 uses full 24-bit color only when your terminal says it supports it, through COLORTERM=truecolor or COLORTERM=24bit. Otherwise it uses the 256-color palette when TERM contains 256color, and the 16 standard colors if not. If a theme’s colors look wrong, check that COLORTERM is set in the terminal you start o4 from.

Customize theme colors

To change individual colors, create ~/.o4/theme.toml. Its values override the theme you selected; colors you don’t set keep the theme’s values. Colors are six-digit hex values, with or without a leading #:

accent = "#5B9BD5"
fg_dim = "#8A8F98"
code_bg = "#1E2127"

These keys change what you see:

Key	Colors
`fg`	Most text, including your messages.
`fg_dim`	Dimmed text, such as hints, the `>` before your messages, and the marker before each reply.
`text_primary`	The model’s replies in the transcript, and titles and other main text in panes, pickers and the agents dashboard.
`text_secondary`	The model’s reasoning when Thinking display is on, and secondary details in panes and the session picker.
`text_disabled`	Rows in panes that have no action, such as a plugin on the Discover tab that’s already installed.
`text_inverse`	Text on filled labels, such as transcript search matches and the selected image above the prompt.
`accent`	Highlights, such as the prompt’s `>`, selected items, focused action chips and the spinner.
`accent_shimmer`	The second color of the animated spinner.
`assistant_message_fg`	Headings and details in the approval panel, and the pulsing cursor at the end of a reply while it streams.
`success`, `warning`, `error`	Status colors. `success` and `error` also color added and removed lines in the `/diff` view, and `warning` is the background of transcript search matches.
`info`	Image labels above the prompt, and one of the spinner’s colors.
`diff_added`, `diff_removed`	The background of added and removed lines in the change previews that `edit` and `write` show in the transcript.
`bubble_border`	The border of those change previews, and the brackets around action chips.
`code_bg`, `code_fg`	Code blocks: `code_bg` is their background, and `code_fg` colors the language label and code blocks that don’t name a language.
`syntect_theme`	The highlighting theme for code. See below.
`border`	Borders of dialogs, code blocks, the completion list, and question cards in the transcript, such as a question from the model.
`bar_border`	Borders and dividers in panes, the session picker and the agents dashboard.
`bg_panel`	The background of panes, dialogs, the completion list and notices.
`bg_selection`, `bg_panel_hover`	The selected row in panes, the agents dashboard, the agent and task selector, the session picker, and the directory question o4 asks when you resume a session. In panes, o4 uses `bg_panel_hover` instead when `bg_selection` is too close to `bg_panel`.
`selection_bg`, `selection_fg`	The selected entry in the completion list and the Time Machine, the block under the cursor in Navigation Mode, and text you select in the transcript. `selection_fg` also colors the text of the selected row in panes, the session picker and the resume directory question, and the selected answer in a question card.
`bg`	The background of the side chat (`/hey`), the rows of the agent and task selector, and a few other areas. o4 doesn’t fill the rest of the screen, so it keeps your terminal’s background.
`input_border`, `input_border_focused`	The prompt box’s border, and its border while the prompt has focus.
`input_fg`, `placeholder`	In the prompt box: the text you type while it has focus, and the `Type a message...` placeholder.
`cursor`	The cursor in the prompt box and in a question card’s Other answer, and the cursor at the end of a streaming reply when Animations is off or an approval is waiting.
`scrollbar_track`, `scrollbar_thumb`	The transcript’s scrollbar when Scrollbar is on. The thumb uses `accent` while the view follows new output.
`scrim`	The color the screen behind a dialog is dimmed toward, and the color notices fade toward as they disappear.
`shadow`	The shadow beside a dialog.

syntect_theme takes one of base16-ocean.dark, base16-eighties.dark, base16-mocha.dark, base16-ocean.light, InspiredGitHub, Solarized (dark) or Solarized (light). It applies to code blocks and to the change previews of edit and write. An unknown name falls back to InspiredGitHub when the theme’s bg is a light color, and to base16-ocean.dark otherwise. The auto and terminal themes leave bg to your terminal, and light-ansi uses a basic terminal color. o4 counts both as dark here, so these themes fall back to base16-ocean.dark unless you set a light bg in theme.toml. The other keys are accepted, but in 0.2.74 they change little or nothing:

base is ignored. The theme you select is always the starting point.
Your messages use fg, so user_message_fg only colors code blocks in them that name a language but aren’t highlighted, for example with Syntax highlight off.
The transcript and the Transcript Reader show headings, links and inline code in the normal text color, so heading1, heading2, heading3, link and link_style have no effect.
These keys aren’t used: brand, brand_shimmer, brand_secondary, brand_secondary_shimmer, system_message_fg, border_focused, border_shimmer, border_focused_shimmer, bg_input, bg_cursor, success_shimmer, error_shimmer, warning_shimmer, info_shimmer, merged, merged_shimmer, diff_added_dimmed, diff_removed_dimmed, link_visited, bubble_bg_user, bubble_bg_user_hover, bubble_bg_assistant, bubble_bg_assistant_hover, bubble_bg_system, bubble_bg_system_hover, scrollbar_thumb_hover, input_placeholder, input_cursor, agent_red, agent_blue, agent_green, agent_yellow, agent_purple, agent_orange, agent_pink, agent_cyan, rate_limit_fill, rate_limit_empty, fast_mode, fast_mode_shimmer, brief_label_you and brief_label_assistant.

o4 watches theme.toml while it runs, so your changes appear as soon as you save the file. If the file can’t be read or has an error, such as an invalid color or a key o4 doesn’t know, o4 keeps the current colors and shows a Theme reload error notice. At startup, o4 ignores a file with an error and starts with the selected theme’s own colors, after writing Warning: Failed to load theme file and the reason to standard error. The file can be at most 64 KB.

Display options

These rows are in /config appearance:

Setting	What it does	Default
Timestamps	Meant to show the time next to each message. In 0.2.74 o4 saves this setting but doesn’t show timestamps in the transcript either way.	on
Nerd fonts	Use Nerd Font icons. Turn this off if icons show as boxes or question marks. The setup wizard’s Nerd Font icons row starts at `off`, so it’s off if you finished the wizard without changing it.	on
Scrollbar	Show a scrollbar when the transcript is longer than the screen.	off
Syntax highlight	Color code blocks in messages.	on
Action chips	Show quick actions after the model’s reply, such as Run Tests, View Diff, and Undo (see The Undo chip).	on
File watcher	Watch the workspace for file changes made outside o4. In 0.2.74 this has no visible effect; turn it off if watching fails on your system. Takes effect after a restart.	on
Animations	Animate the spinner and other live effects.	on
Reduce motion	Turn off animations and transitions. Turning it on also turns Animations off, and while it’s on, Animations starts off in every session.	off
Screen reader	Show plain text in place of animation, box drawing, and icons, so a screen reader reads the screen cleanly. See Screen reader mode.	off

The Thinking display row in /config reasoning controls whether the model’s thinking is shown when the model provides it. See Reasoning and prompt profiles. o4 stores these settings in two files in ~/.o4:

settings.json holds Nerd fonts (nerd_fonts), Scrollbar (scrollbar), Syntax highlight (syntax_highlighting_disabled, which is true when highlighting is off), Action chips (show_action_chips), File watcher (show_file_watcher), and Reduce motion (reduce_motion).
display.json holds Timestamps (show_timestamps), Animations (animations), Screen reader (screen_reader), and Thinking display (show_thinking).

Screen reader mode makes the interface easier for a screen reader to read. The Screen reader row turns it on and off right away. It changes the display like this:

Nothing animates. The spinners and the fade and slide effects stop, and a running step shows the text [*] in place of a spinner. While Animations is on, the welcome logo and the hint line under it don’t appear at all.
Messages in the transcript start with a plain You: label instead of a colored bar or box.
Dialogs use +, -, and | for their borders. Tool calls, the Time Machine, and the agents dashboard use plain ASCII text instead of box drawing, and a running tool call says running. Diffs are listed as lines that start with + and -.
The model icon before the model name in the footer is removed, and “need input” counts appear as plain text.
Status changes of sub-agents, such as one that needs your approval or fails, are announced as short notices.

To turn screen reader mode on for a single session, start o4 with --accessibility:

o4 --accessibility

The flag doesn’t change your saved setting by itself. But if you change any row that display.json holds while the flag is on, o4 saves screen_reader as true, and screen reader mode stays on in later sessions until you turn the Screen reader row off.

Vim mode

The Vim mode row on the Keys tab of /config keys turns on Vim-style modal editing in the prompt. The setup wizard offers the same choice. It’s off by default. o4 saves it as vim_mode in ~/.o4/settings.json.

In o4 0.2.74, turning on Vim mode doesn’t change how the main prompt behaves. Esc in the prompt still switches to Navigation Mode, so the prompt’s Vim normal mode can’t be reached.

Change key bindings

Some of o4’s actions can be moved to different keys. To see the current keys, open /config keys and choose Current keybindings. The Bindings pane lists every action you can remap with the key it’s bound to, or unbound. For cycle_model, cycle_reasoning, cycle_approval, and cycle_sandbox_tier, it also shows the current value, for example alt-s · guarded. Press Esc to close the pane. To change a binding, add a [keybindings] table to ~/.o4/config.toml. Each line maps an action name to a key:

[keybindings]
toggle_todo_list = "f2"
toggle_time_machine = "alt-h"
open_transcript_reader = "f3"

Restart o4 for changes to take effect.

Keys you can use

Key form	Example
`alt-` and one character	`alt-h`, `alt-/`
`shift-tab`	`shift-tab`
Function keys	`f1` through `f12`
`ctrl-t`	`ctrl-t`

Other ctrl- keys are reserved for o4’s built-in shortcuts. Arrow keys and plain letters can’t be remapped either. When you bind an action to a new key, its old key stops working. If the new key was used by another action, it now belongs to the action you bound it to. If o4 can’t use a line, for example an unknown action name or a reserved key, it shows a warning when it starts and keeps the default for that action. In a trusted project, [keybindings] in the project’s .o4/config.toml or .o4/config.local.toml also applies, and wins over your own file for the actions it sets. See Workspace trust.

Actions you can remap

Default keys are written the way you’d write them in config.toml, which is also how the Bindings pane shows them.

Action	Default key	What it does
`cycle_reasoning`	`alt-r`	Switch to the next reasoning level.
`steer_current_task`	`alt-e`	Send the prompt as steering for the running turn.
`edit_last_queued`	`alt-q`	Pull the last queued message back into the prompt.
`resume_queue`	`alt-g`	Resume a held message queue.
`cycle_approval`	`alt-a`	Switch to the next approval mode.
`toggle_plan_mode`	`shift-tab`	Turn Plan Mode on or off.
`new_tab`	`alt-n`	Open a new session tab.
`close_tab`	`alt-w`	Close the current tab.
`next_tab`	`alt-j`	Switch to the next tab.
`prev_tab`	`alt-k`	Switch to the previous tab.
`cycle_model`	`alt-m`	Switch to the next model.
`undo_last_change`	`alt-u`	Undo the last file change.
`toggle_diff_pane`	`alt-d`	Open Session Diff.
`toggle_radar_pane`	`alt-t`	Open or close Workspace Radar.
`toggle_task_board`	`alt-b`	Open or close the task board.
`toggle_todo_list`	`alt-l`	Open or close the todo list.
`open_transcript_reader`	`ctrl-t`	Open the Transcript Reader.
`toggle_time_machine`	None	Open or close the Time Machine sidebar.
`cycle_sandbox_tier`	`alt-s`	Switch to the next sandbox tier.
`repeat_with_correction`	`alt-.`	Put your last prompt back in the input so you can correct it.
`panic_pause`	`alt-x`	Pause all running work, or resume it.
`approve_pending`	`alt-y`	Approve the waiting approval.
`deny_pending`	`alt-z`	Deny the waiting approval.

Keys that aren’t in this table, such as the Navigation Mode letters and the keys inside dialogs, can’t be changed. For every key, see Keyboard shortcuts.

Get started

Using o4

Planning and agents

Models

Safety

Customize

Extend

Help

Themes and display

Open the settings

Themes

Terminal colors

Customize theme colors

Display options

Vim mode

Change key bindings

Keys you can use

Actions you can remap

​Open the settings

​Themes

​Terminal colors

​Customize theme colors

​Display options

​Screen reader mode

​Vim mode

​Change key bindings

​Keys you can use

​Actions you can remap

Open the settings

Themes

Terminal colors

Customize theme colors

Display options

Screen reader mode

Vim mode

Change key bindings

Keys you can use

Actions you can remap