A cross-platform time based alacritty theme switcher inspired by the excellent circadian.el Emacs package by guidoschmidt, written in Python.

• Installation
  • Pip
  • AUR
  • Git
• Configuration
  • Theme format
• Usage
  • System Services
    • Linux (Systemd)
    • Windows (shell:startup)
    • MacOS (launchd)

The package can be installed from multiple sources (other than Git releases):

$ pip install alacritty-circadian 

Using the yay AUR wrapper:

$ yay alacritty-circadian

This will also install the required system services, which have to be added manually when installing from pip. Read below for more info.

Either download the release, or just clone the head. Then, cd into the directory and install the package locally.

$ python -m build
$ pip install .

You'll find some example config files in docs/

Note: the package has been made with setuptools and build

The program parses a YAML file named circadian.yaml in ~/.config/alacritty/circadian.yaml.

It has the following fields:

#
# Choose whatever folder you like to store the themes
#
# If you are a *NIX user:
theme-folder: ~/.config/alacritty/themes
#
# If you are a WINDOWS user:
# Remember to escape special chars for Windows paths and surround them
# with double quotes if you are using environment variables, e.g.:
theme-folder: "%APPDATA%\\alacritty\\themes"

#
# If you want to use sun phases instead of time, put your coordinates in the
# config file:
coordinates:
  latitude: 40.684485
  longitude: -74.401383

# Themes are an associative array of the following format.
# Theme names MUST NOT use file extensions.
#
# 'time' values can either be:
#   - an HH:MM time format
#   - one of the following sun phases:
#       * dawn
#       * sunrise
#       * noon
#       * sunset
#       * dusk
themes:
  - time: sunset
    name: tokyo-night
  - time: 7:00
    name: pencil-light

All themes should use the format commonly used for alacritty themes:

# Colors
colors:
  # Default Colors
  primary:
    background: '0xf1f1f1'
    foreground: '0x424242'
  # Normal colors
  normal:
    black:   '0x212121'
    ...

    # Other alacritty compatible fields

You can find a comprehensive list of them at alacritty-theme.

To start the service just run the CLI script:

$ alacritty-circadian

The intended way to use the utility is via a system service.

On a systemd init Linux this is attainable by adding the following service file to ~/.config/systemd/user/alacritty-circadian.service:

[Unit]
Description=Alacritty automatic theme switch

[Service]
ExecStart=alacritty-circadian

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Installing via the AUR will automate this process for you, leaving you to just enable the system services.

$ systemctl --user enable alacritty-circadian.service
$ systecmtl --user start alacritty-circadian.service

Included in the releases are .exe binaries to use as a startup application, just download one and add a shortcut to it in the Startup Windows folder (Win + R 'shell:startup' to open it). After that you'll be able to see it in your task manager.

It should be quite easy to add a launchd service in ~/Library/LaunchAgents although you'll have to provide your own service file (i don't own a Mac).