Pressing <enter> in +list-themes should explain how to save theme

[mitchellh]

Discussed in #4708

^{Originally posted by jcollie January 6, 2025}
Pressing <enter> in +list-themes should pop up a message with instructions on how to edit the config file and reload. I've seen many people confused that there's no way to set the theme from the TUI.

Solution

Approved as proposed until #2353 is complete and we can actually set the theme.

[schrepfler]

Just an idea, I think the list-theme tui could do things a bit differently, if one presses Enter I would just apply the theme to the current session without saving the theme in the config file (saving it to temporary session env values) while saving the theme in the config file can be some other button, like S or Alt/Cmd+S.
This would enable things like quickly opening several panes and quickly giving different themes to each one (useful as having the same colour in each pane makes things clash. In iTerm I didn't need this that much because the pane divider for my darkish theme is bright colour but I do notice this quite a bit in Ghostty but I think just having a quick way to select a different, per pane theme would be useful on it's own, even without the persistence option.

[jcollie]

Just an idea, I think the list-theme tui could do things a bit differently

Once Ghostty has an API things like this will be possible. But that is not what this issue is about. It's about helping users discover how to modify the theme now. It may be many months before an API is available.