Stratus

Stratus is a dark-first, content-first theme for Obsidian, inspired by the quiet precision of Cloudflare Docs and Cloudflare's Kumo design system. Its signature appearance pairs a near-black canvas with crisp typography, Cloudflare orange accents, sky-blue links, deliberate spacing, restrained borders, and readable code—without changing how Obsidian works. A carefully matched light appearance is included for daytime use and system-theme switching.

The theme stays focused: two polished color schemes, no required plugins, no remote assets, and a small optional Style Settings panel when you want to tune width, density, or accent.

Highlights

• Cohesive Reading view, Live Preview, and Source mode
• Purpose-built dark and light appearances with accessible semantic colors
• Wider default readable column (1000px) plus Comfortable / Wide / Full presets
• Optional Style Settings for width, text size, density, accent, properties, and focus chrome
• Note helpers: wide, max, cards, table-100, img-grid, img-small, img-center, callout-muted, callout-borderless
• Quieter properties by default; clearer Search / Backlinks / Outline panes
• Progressive Dataview and Tasks polish when those plugins are installed
• Purposeful typography for headings, prose, lists, links, tables, quotes, callouts, properties, tags, tasks, embeds, and code
• Harmonized tabs, sidebars, navigation, search, menus, dialogs, settings, inputs, tooltips, and status bar
• Progressive styling for core views including Graph, Canvas, and Bases
• Keyboard-visible focus states, print/PDF-friendly export, and motion-reduction support
• Default Obsidian layout and interaction patterns
• Offline by design: no requests for fonts, images, analytics, or updates

Install

Manual installation

1. Download theme.css and manifest.json from the release whose version you want to install.

2. In your vault, create this folder if it does not already exist:

   .obsidian/themes/Stratus/
   

3. Put both files in that folder:

   your-vault/
   └── .obsidian/
       └── themes/
           └── Stratus/
               ├── manifest.json
               └── theme.css
   

4. In Obsidian, open Settings → Appearance → Themes, then choose Stratus.

If Stratus does not appear, use Reload app without saving from the command palette or restart Obsidian.

Community Themes

After Stratus is accepted into the Community Themes directory, it can be installed and updated from Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage. Until then, use the manual installation above.

Design scope

Stratus 1.1 is deliberately dark-first and keeps Obsidian's native layout intact. It aims to make the entire application feel like a calm developer docs surface while keeping notes—not interface decoration—at the center. The light appearance follows the same typography, spacing, borders, and interaction language rather than behaving like an unrelated fallback.

Included:

• Core Markdown and editor surfaces
• Core application chrome and controls
• Dark and light color schemes
• Desktop and mobile-responsive styling
• Sensible system-font and locally installed Inter fallbacks
• Optional Style Settings controls and note cssclasses
• Progressive styling for Dataview and Tasks when present
• Graceful behavior when optional core features are unavailable

Not included:

• Custom navigation models or rearranged controls
• Required community plugins (Style Settings / Dataview / Tasks are optional)
• Bundled or remotely loaded fonts
• Promises of pixel-perfect support for every third-party plugin

Note cssclasses

Add any of these under a note's cssclasses property:

Readable line length must remain enabled in Settings → Editor for width presets and wide / max to apply.

Fonts and privacy

Stratus prefers Inter when it is already installed on the device, then falls back to the platform's UI sans-serif stack. It does not download Inter or any other asset. The theme contains no telemetry and makes no network requests.

Quality assurance

The repository includes tests/Theme showcase.md, a broad Markdown fixture for visual regression testing. The release checklist covers:

• Reading view, Live Preview, and Source mode
• Narrow panes, wide panes, splits, pop-out windows, and readable line length
• Desktop and mobile layouts
• Settings, modals, menus, tooltips, hover previews, and keyboard navigation
• Search, Graph, Canvas, Bases, Properties, Bookmarks, Backlinks, Outline, and Tags
• Focus visibility, contrast, zoom, long lines, overflow, and reduced motion

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the complete contributor and release checklist.

Attribution

Stratus is an independent, unofficial project inspired by the typography, palette, spacing, and restrained interface design of Cloudflare's Kumo project. Kumo is available under the MIT License; its copyright notice is retained in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Stratus is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Cloudflare, Inc. “Cloudflare” and related names and marks belong to their respective owner. Obsidian is a trademark of Dynalist Inc.; this community project is not an official Obsidian product.

License

Stratus is released under the GNU General Public License version 3. Modified versions distributed to others must remain open under the same license terms.