Shimmering Focus ships with sensible, opinionated defaults — but no two workflows are the same. The Style Settings plugin, created by @mgmeyers, is what unlocks the full depth of Shimmering Focus customization. Without it the theme works perfectly well, but installing Style Settings gives you access to more than 100 individual settings covering everything from color schemes and typography to vim mode behavior and plugin-specific tweaks. It also adds three dedicated toggle commands to the Obsidian command palette.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-focus/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Installing the Style Settings Plugin
Open Obsidian Settings
Press
Cmd/Ctrl + , to open Settings, then navigate to Community plugins in the left sidebar.Enable Community Plugins
If you haven’t already, click Turn on community plugins and confirm. Obsidian’s restricted mode must be off to install community plugins.
Browse and Search
Click Browse to open the plugin browser, then type
Style Settings in the search field.Accessing Shimmering Focus Settings
Once Style Settings is installed, all Shimmering Focus options appear in a dedicated section:- Open Obsidian Settings (
Cmd/Ctrl + ,). - Click Style Settings in the left sidebar.
- Scroll to the Shimmering Focus section and expand it.
Setting Categories
Shimmering Focus organizes its settings into ten clearly labeled categories. Each category is collapsed by default; click a heading to expand it.🙈 Show/hide UI elements
Re-enable interface elements that the theme hides by default: the tab bar, sidebar buttons, close buttons, new-tab button, tab-list button, sidebar toggle buttons, and suggester keyboard hints. Also controls URL visibility in Source Mode.
🔲 Workspace
Adjust the header bar behavior, tab width, sidebar overlay mode (right sidebar on top of the editor), status bar visibility when sidebars are closed, and notification position.
🔠 Font
Configure heading font family, heading font size scaling, code block font size, heading letter spacing, and heading color and background options.
🎨 Colors & shapes
Choose from five color schemes (Gamma, macOS native, Coffee, Everforest, Gruvbox), adjust background color hue for light and dark mode, switch to angular corners, and control coloring of bold text, italic text, highlights, and strikethroughs.
📑 Editor content
Set the active block indicator style (gutter line or background highlight), inactive pane opacity, readable line length in pixels, and trailing space visibility.
🖼️ Media
Control image sizing (default reduced to 50%, toggleable via command), enable or disable alt-text as image caption, and automatically disable readable line length on notes that contain tables.
🏃 Vim mode
Configure cursor blink rate, enable relative line numbers, enable cursorline highlighting in normal mode, and disable mouse hover tooltips and the “Edit this block” button that interrupts keyboard-driven navigation.
✍️ Longform & writing
Settings for notes in Longform projects or using the
writing CSS class: main font family, font size, line height, letter spacing, paragraph indentation, text alignment, and word count display behavior.⚙️ Plugin-specific settings
Fine-grained controls for File Explorer (hide attachment folders, show navigation buttons), Bookmarks (show sidebar buttons and icons), Backlinks and Outgoing Links (restore full display), Outline (show sidebar buttons), Bases, and Various Complements.
ℹ️ Info
Links to the theme changelog, README, and credits. Not a configurable section, but a handy reference point when you need to look something up.
Commands Added by Style Settings
When Style Settings is installed, Shimmering Focus registers three commands in the Obsidian command palette (Cmd/Ctrl + P). These let you toggle key behaviors on the fly without opening Settings:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Toggle folding of URLs in Source Mode | Hides or reveals the URL portion of Markdown links [text](url) on non-active lines in Source Mode. |
| Toggle between reduced and original image size | Switches images between the reduced size configured in Style Settings (default 50%) and full 100% size. |
| Toggle readable line length | Enables or disables the readable line length constraint for the current session. Requires Obsidian’s native Readable line length setting to be on. |
All three commands can be assigned custom hotkeys in Obsidian Settings → Hotkeys. Search for “Shimmering Focus” to find them quickly.
Creating a Custom Color Scheme
If none of the built-in color schemes match your preference, you can define your own using a short CSS snippet — no prior CSS experience required. The theme exposes CSS variables for background hue, accent colors, heading colors, and link colors. See the Shimmering Focus README for the full snippet template and instructions on adding it as an Obsidian CSS snippet.Back to Installation
Not yet installed? Head back to the installation guide to get Shimmering Focus set up first.