Light/Dark Dual Themes

Shiki supports outputting light/dark dual or multiple themes. Shiki's dual themes approach uses CSS variables to store the colors on each token.

Change the theme option in codeToHtml to options with light and dark keys to generate two themes.

import { codeToHtml } from 'shiki'

const code = await codeToHtml('console.log("hello")', {
  lang: 'javascript',
  themes: { 
    light: 'min-light',
    dark: 'nord',
  }
})

The following HTML will be generated (demo preview):

<pre
  class="shiki shiki-themes min-light nord"
  style="background-color:#ffffff;--shiki-dark-bg:#2e3440ff;color:#24292eff;--shiki-dark:#d8dee9ff"
  tabindex="0"
>
  <code>
    <span class="line">
      <span style="color:#1976D2;--shiki-dark:#D8DEE9">console</span>
      <span style="color:#6F42C1;--shiki-dark:#ECEFF4">.</span>
      <span style="color:#6F42C1;--shiki-dark:#88C0D0">log</span>
      <span style="color:#24292EFF;--shiki-dark:#D8DEE9FF">(</span>
      <span style="color:#22863A;--shiki-dark:#ECEFF4">"</span>
      <span style="color:#22863A;--shiki-dark:#A3BE8C">hello</span>
      <span style="color:#22863A;--shiki-dark:#ECEFF4">"</span>
      <span style="color:#24292EFF;--shiki-dark:#D8DEE9FF">)</span>
      </span>
    </code>
</pre>

To make it reactive to your site's theme, you need to add a short CSS snippet:

Query-based Dark Mode

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
  .shiki,
  .shiki span {
    color: var(--shiki-dark) !important;
    background-color: var(--shiki-dark-bg) !important;
    /* Optional, if you also want font styles */
    font-style: var(--shiki-dark-font-style) !important;
    font-weight: var(--shiki-dark-font-weight) !important;
    text-decoration: var(--shiki-dark-text-decoration) !important;
  }
}

Class-based Dark Mode

html.dark .shiki,
html.dark .shiki span {
  color: var(--shiki-dark) !important;
  background-color: var(--shiki-dark-bg) !important;
  /* Optional, if you also want font styles */
  font-style: var(--shiki-dark-font-style) !important;
  font-weight: var(--shiki-dark-font-weight) !important;
  text-decoration: var(--shiki-dark-text-decoration) !important;
}

Multiple Themes

It's also possible to support more than two themes. In the themes object, you can have an arbitrary number of themes, and specify the default theme with defaultColor option.

import { codeToHtml } from 'shiki'

const code = await codeToHtml('console.log("hello")', {
  lang: 'javascript',
  themes: {
    light: 'github-light',
    dark: 'github-dark',
    dim: 'github-dimmed',
    // any number of themes
  },

  // optional customizations
  defaultColor: 'light',
  cssVariablePrefix: '--shiki-'
})

A token would be generated like:

<span style="color:#1976D2;--shiki-dark:#D8DEE9;--shiki-dim:#566575">console</span>

Then update your CSS snippet to control when each theme takes effect. Here is an example:

Demo preview

Without Default Color

If you want to take full control of the colors or avoid using !important to override, you can optionally disable the default color by setting defaultColor to false.

import { codeToHtml } from 'shiki'

const code = await codeToHtml('console.log("hello")', {
  lang: 'javascript',
  themes: {
    light: 'vitesse-light',
    dark: 'vitesse-dark',
  },
  defaultColor: false, // <--
})

With it, a token would be generated like:

<span style="--shiki-dark:#D8DEE9;--shiki-light:#2E3440">console</span>

In that case, the generated HTML would have no style out of the box, you need to add your own CSS to control the colors.

It's also possible to control the theme in CSS variables. For more, refer to the great research and examples by @mayank99 in this issue #6.