Nu Ayu

Latest version: 1.7.5 — now with full Notebook Navigator styling

Updated: 2026-08-23

A minimal theme built around restraint. Soft, rounded surfaces, transparent dividers, and a deliberately muted text palette keep the interface quiet so your notes stay loud. Removed unnecessary hover effects, highlights, and other things that distract you from what's important – your thinking process.

Light mode draws from the Ayu color tradition: warm off-whites and purple-grey text that reduce eye strain without feeling washed out. Dark mode is an original: deep violet-tinged backgrounds with a consistent warm orange accent throughout.

The approach was "future-proof changes" — change only where it matters for removing distractions, improving focus, and smoothing experience – all while keeping longevity in mind. This keeps the theme stable across Obsidian updates and avoids the visual debt.

Features

• Light & Dark modes
• Super clean minimal look
• Removed most of the borders, hover effects, highlights on hover, unexpected box-shadows, and other stuff that contributes to distraction
• Very nice looking Dark Mode crafted from scratch with optional full black backgrounds option for mobile devices
• Special attention to mobile devices – bigger tap areas, file tree, reduced animations, and more
• Full size sidebars on phones
• Meaningful padding for Bases embeds on phone screens
• Custom colors for Callouts
• Custom colors for Code Blocks
• Some love for Bases Cards appearance
• Dataview embeds and task lists now look much more "native" thanks to removing "foreign" animations and box-shadows effects
• Smooth fade-ins for the embedded content
• Smooth appearance for the Markdown syntax
• Full Notebook Navigator styling to match overall aesthetics
• Style Settings support:
  • Tab Close button on the left – native feel for macOS and iPadOS
  • Thin Headers for cleaner look
  • Accent Folders adds orange accent for visual hierarchy
  • Removing Labels on Bases Cards
  • Clean links – removing accents for notes heavy on internal links
  • Full black backgrounds option for mobile devices

As a result you have much more fluid, cohesive, and less overwhelming experience, with less distractions and more space for meaningful work.

Manual Installation

Note: for now this theme is still under review to get to the official catalog. Once it is there – you'll be able to find it through standard Obsidian theme repo.

1. Download the theme.css and manifest.json files from the this GitHub page, or Download the latest release archive.
2. Open your Obsidian vault on your computer.
3. Navigate to the hidden .obsidian/themes/ folder. Tip: If you don't see the .obsidian folder, enable "Show hidden files" in your OS settings.
4. Create a new folder inside themes and name it Nu Ayu.
5. Move the downloaded theme.css and manifest.json files into this new folder.
6. Open Obsidian, go to Settings > Appearance, and select Nu Ayu from the Themes dropdown.

Screenshots