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What it styles

Slack's "Custom theme" input accepts eight comma-separated hex colors that drive the left sidebar, channel list, presence dots, and mention badges. Slatewave maps them like this:

• Column BG — slate-800 #1E293B, matching the VSCode ANSI black and terminal sidebar tones
• Menu BG — #282C34, the Slatewave editor background; used for the workspace-switcher and slash-menu surface
• Active Item — slate-700 #334155, mirroring VSCode's list.activeSelectionBackground for a calm, non-competing highlight
• Active Item Text — teal-300 #5EEAD4, the signature accent; pops the currently selected channel or DM
• Hover Item — #282C34, one step lighter than the column for a subtle hover affordance
• Text Color — slate-200 #E2E8F0, matching the VSCode editor foreground
• Active Presence — teal-300 #5EEAD4, replacing Slack's default green to keep the palette consistent
• Mention Badge — rose-400 #FB7185, matching ANSI red across the companion themes

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Installation

Slack doesn't expose a theme file format — themes are pasted into Preferences as a comma-separated hex string.

Paste the theme

1. Copy the line below (or grab it from slatewave.txt):

   #1E293B,#282C34,#334155,#5EEAD4,#282C34,#E2E8F0,#5EEAD4,#FB7185
   

2. In Slack, open Preferences → Themes.

3. Scroll to Colors and click Create a custom theme.

4. Paste the string into the colors box at the bottom of the dialog (the single-line input; not the individual color pickers).

5. Slack applies the theme immediately. Close the dialog to keep it.

Share with your workspace

Once pasted, click Share this theme with your workspace to post the string into any channel. Teammates can click Switch sidebar theme on the message to apply it in one tap.

From a local clone

git clone https://github.com/kevinlangleyjr/slack-slatewave
pbcopy < slack-slatewave/slatewave.txt

Then paste into Slack's custom theme dialog as above.

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Palette

Slatewave shares its palette with the companion themes. The eight slots, in Slack's custom-theme order:

#		Slot	Hex	Tailwind	Role
1		Column BG	#1E293B	slate-800	sidebar background
2		Menu BG	#282C34	—	workspace menu / slash-menu surface
3		Active Item	#334155	slate-700	selected channel background
4		Active Item Text	#5EEAD4	teal-300	selected channel text (signature)
5		Hover Item	#282C34	—	hover background
6		Text Color	#E2E8F0	slate-200	default sidebar text
7		Active Presence	#5EEAD4	teal-300	online indicator dot
8		Mention Badge	#FB7185	rose-400	unread mention badge

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Customize

The theme is a plain comma-separated hex string — eight colors, in the order above. To tweak a single slot without forking, edit the value in Slack's Create a custom theme dialog after pasting. Slack stores the theme in its local preferences, not in this file, so changes there stick per-workspace without affecting anything upstream.

To fork the string itself: edit slatewave.txt. Slack accepts upper- or lower-case hex; the leading # is required on each color.

Pair with Slack's base theme

For the cleanest match, set Slack's base appearance to Dark (Preferences → Themes → Dark) before pasting the custom colors. The sidebar custom theme composes over the dark base — pasting over the light base will give you a mismatched message pane.

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Slatewave family

One palette. Every tool.

• Editors — VSCode · JetBrains · Xcode · Sublime Text · Zed · Neovim · Helix
• Terminals — Alacritty · Ghostty · iTerm2 · WezTerm · Windows Terminal · Kitty
• Prompts — Oh My Posh · Powerlevel10k · Starship
• Multiplexer — tmux
• CLI — bat · delta · LSD · btop
• Notes — Obsidian · Logseq · MarkEdit · Anytype
• Launchers — Alfred · Raycast

See getslatewave.com for the full family.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. For palette changes, include a before/after screenshot of the Slack sidebar with at least one active channel, one unread channel with a mention badge, and one DM with an online presence dot so the visual tradeoff is obvious.

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License

WTFPL — Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License. See LICENSE.