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Glass

v0.1.0

Liquid glass — a transparent, frosted theme (dark + light) for Zed

Updated 3 months ago
787 downloads 1 star Repository ↗
Install in Zed
zedext main
// Load settings, retrying a few times
fn load_config(path: &str) -> Result<Config, Error> {
    let retries = 3;
    let text = fs::read_to_string(path)?;
    let name = "settings.json";
    Ok(Config { text, retries, name })
}

Glass

Zed Extension Version License: MIT

A liquid-glass theme for Zed — a transparent, frosted look that lets your desktop show through the editor, tree, and terminal as one continuous pane.

Ships two variants:

  • Dark Glass — transparent dark glass (primary).
  • Light Glass — transparent light glass.

Screenshots

Dark Glass Light Glass
Dark Glass Light Glass

Note: transparency requires a transparent window background. This works over your desktop wallpaper; the effect is strongest over an even or lighter area.

How it works

The tint lives in a single window background; the editor, project panel, tabs, breadcrumbs, and terminal are all transparent and read through it. This keeps every surface the exact same tone — no seams, no double-darkened docks — and gives the file tree a real backdrop instead of bare wallpaper.

Transparency looks best over an even or lighter area of your wallpaper; glass over a very dark region will naturally read dark, since there is little for it to reveal.

Installation

From the Zed extension registry

Available in the Zed extension gallery.

Cmd+Shift+X → search Glass → Install. Then Cmd+K Cmd+T → Dark Glass / Light Glass.

As a dev extension (local)

Cmd+Shift+X → Install Dev Extension → select this repository's root. Zed picks up themes/glass.json automatically.

Manual (theme file only)

mkdir -p ~/.config/zed/themes
cp themes/glass.json ~/.config/zed/themes/

Restart Zed and select the theme with Cmd+K Cmd+T.

Requirements

Transparency requires a transparent window background, which is set by the theme (background.appearance: "transparent"). Changing that mode takes full effect only after a complete restart of Zed (Cmd+Q), not a live theme reload.

Tuning transparency

The dark theme's tint is a single window background — background and surface.background (#06080cbf, ~75%). Edit the last two hex digits (alpha) to make the whole UI lighter or darker at once.

  • title_bar / status_bar are painted over the desktop (not over content), so they are given the same color explicitly — keep them in sync when you change the alpha.
  • Other surfaces (editor.background, panel.background, tab_bar, terminal.background) are transparent (#00000000) and show the shared background.
  • panel.background is kept transparent on purpose: Zed paints the project panel row by row, so a semi-transparent value produces seams between rows. The tree tone comes from the shared background instead — no seams.

Known Zed limitations

  • Custom themes reload on restart; switching background.appearance requires a full Cmd+Q.
  • Zed does not yet support different transparency per panel (issue #9620) — opacity is uniform across the window.

License

MIT

ZedExt An unofficial community project. Not affiliated with Zed Industries.

Data from Zed’s extension registry and GitHub · updated

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