REAPER Theme Structure
Where REAPER themes live on disk and what files make up a theme.
Kind: concept
REAPER uses themes to customize its appearance. These themes usually exist in your REAPER application data directory, such as:
- C:\Users\your username\AppData\Roaming\REAPER\ColorThemes (Windows Vista and later)
- /Users/your username/Library/Application Support/REAPER/ColorThemes (OSX)
REAPER themes can be stored in a .zip file (and named .ReaperThemeZip) for distribution, but for development purposes they usually exist as a combination of files and a directory.
For an example of how a theme is put together, you can go to your ColorThemes path, and find the file "Default_5.0.ReaperThemeZip". Copy it, rename it to .zip, and extract the contents in this directory. You will see two relevant parts:
- Default_5.0_unpacked.ReaperTheme -- this is the theme file which is selectable in REAPER's UI, and it controls the colors and fonts used by a lot of the user interface, including the arrange view and ruler, as well as the path to the images which should be loaded. This file is a text file which you can edit by hand, or for many edits it is easier to do on the fly, by using the action "Theme Development: Show theme tweak/configuration window" in REAPER. The main line which will often need to be edited by hand is the line "ui_img=" in the [REAPER] section, which controls which folder to use theme images from.
- Default_5.0_unpacked -- (a directory) This directory includes many images which will be loaded, and a special file named "rtconfig.txt"