Retro Relay

A warm analog theme for Obsidian — graphite-and-cream in the dark, ink-on-paper in the light, with an amber accent running through both. Every colour pair it ships with has been measured against WCAG 2.1 AA rather than eyeballed.

Features

• Both colour schemes, equally finished. Light mode is a full paper-and-ink palette, not a washed-out inversion of the dark one.
• Measured contrast. 34 foreground/background pairs are checked by a script in this repo. Body text and accents target 4.5:1; code comments and border seams target the large-text and non-text thresholds. Run it yourself: node scripts/check-contrast.mjs.
• Meaning is never colour-only. Callouts carry icons, unresolved links get a dotted underline, the active tab gets an accent rule, and heading hierarchy steps down by weight and size as well as hue — so the theme survives greyscale printing and colour-blind viewing.
• Graph view styled in both schemes. Notes, tags, attachments and unresolved nodes are separated, links sit back, and the canvas uses the theme ground instead of black.
• An orbital plate behind the graph. A faint star glow, coloured orbits and a reticle give the force-directed layout a chart to drift across — faint by default, and adjustable, since the graph itself stays the subject.
• A chromatic spectrum band and drifting atmosphere. A broadcast-style colour bar along the window's top edge (smooth by default, or a hard-edged VHS variant) and a faint cloud wash across dark-mode panes, both optional.
• All thirteen callout families. Every Obsidian callout keyword resolves to an intentional colour, aliases included.
• Polished code. Full syntax token palette, bordered inline-code chips, a language badge on hover, and long lines that scroll inside the block instead of widening the note.
• Tables that behave. Shaded headers, zebra rows, tabular numerals, and horizontal overflow contained to the table.
• Visible keyboard focus. A two-pixel accent ring on every focusable element, via :focus-visible.
• Respects system preferences. prefers-reduced-motion and prefers-contrast: more are both honoured with no configuration.
• Seventeen user settings via the optional Style Settings plugin — and sensible defaults without it.
• No network, no build step. One theme.css, local font stacks only. Nothing is fetched at runtime.

Screenshots

Dark	Light

Installation

From the community directory

Once the theme has been published to the directory:

1. Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage
2. Search for Retro Relay
3. Install and use

Manually

1. Download theme.css and manifest.json from the latest release.
2. Create a folder named exactly Retro Relay in your vault at .obsidian/themes/.
3. Drop both files into it.
4. Restart Obsidian, then pick Retro Relay under Settings → Appearance → Themes.

The folder name has to match the name in manifest.json exactly, or Obsidian will not list the theme.

With the install script

From a clone of this repository:

bash scripts/install-local.sh          # finds your vaults, asks which
bash scripts/install-local.sh --all    # install into every vault found
bash scripts/install-local.sh --vault "/path/to/vault"

Development

git clone https://github.com/RahelaQ/retro-relay.git
cd retro-relay

# Verify the palette still passes contrast after any edit
node scripts/check-contrast.mjs

# Build the clean release payload into dist/
node scripts/build-release.mjs

test-vault/ is a ready-made vault that exercises every element the theme styles — open it in Obsidian and the theme is already selected. After editing theme.css, run node scripts/build-release.mjs --sync-vault to refresh the copy inside it.

Customization

Without any plugin

All colour lives in two blocks in theme.css — .theme-dark (section 3) and .theme-light (section 4). Everything from section 5 onward only references those tokens, so re-skinning the theme means editing the palette and nothing else:

.theme-dark {
  --rr-accent: #F0A055;   /* links, H1, warnings, focus ring */
  --rr-teal:   #62C3B2;   /* tags, external links */
  --rr-ink:    #F2E9D8;   /* body text */
  --rr-bg-1:   #191C20;   /* editor background */
}

After changing anything, re-run node scripts/check-contrast.mjs — a custom accent is not verified automatically.

With Style Settings

Install the Style Settings community plugin and the theme exposes these under Settings → Style Settings → Retro Relay:

Every toggle defaults to the theme's shipped behaviour, so installing the plugin changes nothing until you touch a switch.

Compatibility

• Requires Obsidian 1.5.0 or newer (the theme uses :has() and prefers-contrast).
• Desktop and mobile. No plugins are required; Style Settings is optional.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Before opening a PR:

1. node scripts/check-contrast.mjs passes.
2. You have checked the change in both light and dark mode.
3. Any new colour is added to the palette blocks, not inlined in a rule.

Credits

• Built for Obsidian, following the official theme guidelines.
• Optional settings integration via Style Settings by mgmeyers.
• Icon paths in the development preview pages under scripts/ are from Lucide (ISC licence), the icon set Obsidian itself uses.
• Font stacks reference Iosevka, JetBrains Mono, IBM Plex Mono, Iowan Old Style and Charter where installed, falling back to system fonts. None are bundled or downloaded.

Licence

MIT © 2026 RahelaQ