Night Owl Classic

This repository preserves the discontinued Night Owl Obsidian theme formerly distributed from AstroAir/obsidian-night-owl. The recovered CSS is published unchanged so existing users can install the same theme in new vaults.

Install

1. Download manifest.json and theme.css from the 1.0.3 release.
2. In the target vault, create .obsidian/themes/Night Owl Classic/.
3. Put both downloaded files in that folder.
4. In Obsidian, open Settings → Appearance → Themes and select Night Owl Classic.

Provenance

• Night Owl entered the Obsidian theme registry in 2021 under Ben Hong's bencodezen/obsidian-night-owl-theme project.
• The official registry was updated in November 2025 to list Max Qian and AstroAir/obsidian-night-owl.
• The AstroAir account and repository later became unavailable, and Night Owl disappeared from the registry in an automated update in May 2026. No maintainer statement explaining the discontinuation has been found, so this repository does not claim a definitive reason.
• These 1.0.0 files were recovered from an existing Obsidian installation and verified on August 10, 2026.
• On 2026-09-09 a Community directory new-theme submit under the original name was rejected because the archived original listing still occupies identifier night-owl. The word "Theme" is also banned from directory names.

See NOTICE.md for source links, the license-evidence limitation, and detailed attribution.

Previous repository and original-owner notice

A previous preservation repository, mspirek/obsidian-night-owl, carried a public original-maintainer contact notice (issue #1) from 2026-08-10. That notice invited Max Qian / AstroAir and any other rights holder to reclaim, transfer, object, approve continued maintenance, or correct provenance. It named 2026-09-09 as the earliest date a Community directory request would be considered. No response was received. That previous repository is retired. The full notice text is in docs/PREVIOUS_REPO_CONTACT.md.

If the original maintainer responds here, their direction will be handled transparently and subject to the applicable licenses and platform requirements.

Credits

• Max Qian / AstroAir — author named by the recovered manifest and final official registry entry.
• Ben Hong / bencodezen — creator of the earlier Obsidian Night Owl project in the registry lineage.
• Sarah Drasner — creator of the original Night Owl VS Code theme that inspired this theme.

License

The deleted AstroAir repository was publicly identified as MIT-licensed, but its exact copyright line could not be recovered from the installed bundle or an archive. See LICENSE and NOTICE.md. Corrections from a rights holder are welcome.