the customization guide

Make it yours.

Tune the look and the keys in Settings, and paint every panel with a theme written in plain JSON — no build tools, no accounts. New here? Start with the user guide first.

Settings & appearance

Press ⌘, for Settings. Most of what you’ll reach for lives in two places — Appearance for the look, Keyboard and Hotbar for how you drive it. Everything applies live.

The look

  • Theme — pick from the built-ins (Rascal Light, dark, and several more) in Settings ▸ Appearance or View ▸ Theme, or load your own (below).
  • Accent colour — recolours selection, badges, and the active-pane border on top of any theme.
  • Density & font size — tighten or relax row spacing and bump the base text size for a comfier list.

Keys & chrome

  • Keyboard — every command is rebindable in Settings ▸ Keyboard, with live conflict detection. The full default list is in HOTKEYS.md.
  • Hotbar — curate the per-pane toolbar of one-click actions in Settings ▸ Hotbar; drop your favourite commands right where you want them.
  • Chrome — hide the toolbar and title bar for a quiet, content-first window, and toggle the sidebar with ⌥⌘S.
  • Vim mode — flip on modal navigation and drive with hjkl, /, dd, gg, G.

Crafting a theme

A theme is a single JSON file of hex colors. Drop it in the Themes folder and Rascal repaints every panel — list, sidebar, toolbar, path bar, and the floating finders — to match. The built-in themes are written in exactly the same format, so any of them doubles as a starting template.

The fields

Colors are #RRGGBB or #RRGGBBAA (the alpha form is handy for the translucent selectionBackground). Only id, name, and the color fields are required; the rest fall back to sensible defaults.

FieldMeaning
idUnique slug. Matching a built-in’s id overrides it.
nameDisplay name in the theme list.
appearance"light", "dark", or "automatic" (default). Drives system control tint.
backgroundFile-list background.
sidebarBackgroundSidebar fill.
toolbarBackgroundNavigation toolbar fill.
pathBarBackgroundPath / breadcrumb bar fill.
rowAlternateAlternating-row stripe.
labelPrimaryPrimary text (file names).
labelSecondarySecondary text (sizes, dates).
labelTertiaryTertiary text (faint detail).
accentHighlights, badges, the active-pane border.
selectionBackgroundSelected-row fill — usually the accent at low alpha.
baseFontPointSizeOptional. Base text size (default 13).
rowHeightOptional. List row height (default 22).
monospacedOptional. true renders the UI in a mono font.

A complete example

A soft, warm light theme called Blossom:

blossom.json
{
  "id":                  "blossom",
  "name":                "Blossom",
  "appearance":          "light",
  "background":          "#FFF7FA",
  "sidebarBackground":   "#FCEDF3",
  "toolbarBackground":   "#FDF1F6",
  "pathBarBackground":   "#FCEDF3",
  "rowAlternate":        "#FBEFF4",
  "labelPrimary":        "#3A1F2B",
  "labelSecondary":      "#7A5566",
  "labelTertiary":       "#B08C9C",
  "accent":              "#E0457B",
  "selectionBackground": "#E0457B33",
  "rowHeight":           24
}
  1. Save the file as blossom.json in ~/Library/Application Support/FinderTwo/Themes/View ▸ Theme ▸ Reveal Themes Folder opens it for you.
  2. Choose View ▸ Theme ▸ Reload Themes (or relaunch).
  3. Apply it from View ▸ Theme, ⌘⇧PTheme: Blossom, or Settings ▸ Appearance.

Don’t start from scratch — View ▸ Theme ▸ Export Current Theme… writes the active theme into the folder as editable JSON. Because a matching id overrides a built-in, you can tweak a copy of Rascal Light and keep its name. Accent color, density, and font size from Settings layer on top of any theme.

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