Claude Code desktop gets custom themes, local only

Claude Code on desktop now supports custom themes built as mods, Anthropic’s ClaudeDevs account said on X on November 13. A theme can change the colors and add an animated background, and you can either describe the look to Claude or start from the theme-examples plugin. To try it, update the desktop app to the latest version and use a local session, because themes don’t work in cloud sessions yet and Anthropic says that support is “coming soon.”

A theme is an ordinary mod. Mods are small TypeScript functions that change how Claude Code works: they can rewrite prompts, block risky commands, add custom UI or replace built-in features. Anyone has been able to write them since version 2.1.287. They ship inside plugins and install through /plugin. Anthropic says the desktop app runs CLI plugins the same way the terminal does, whether a user installed them locally or an org manages them centrally.

As of October, mods weren’t sandboxed. A theme you install from someone else’s plugin is TypeScript running on your machine, so read it the way you would read any other plugin before you install it.

To write a theme by hand, the mods interface docs cover the details, including how to put a backdrop behind the conversation.