Get the synth wave glow theme working for VS Code on Mac

synthwaveglow.md

Get the synth wave glow working for VS Code on Mac

These notes are pretty much the same steps as the two extensions list, it's just that I had to collate them together because neither seems to list it fully in the proper order.

1. Install Synthwave ’84/Synthwave + Fluoromachine theme on VS Code (I used the Fluoromachine one)

2. Install Custom CSS and JS Loader

3. Command + Shift + P to open command palette > "Preferences: Open settings (JSON)"

4. Add to the settings object this key, and the value is an array containing the path to the CSS file for your extension. On a Mac it should be the following:

{
    "vscode_custom_css.imports": [
    "file:///Users/${username}/.vscode/extensions/${extension folder name}/${extensions css file name}.css"
    ]
}

So for Synthwave + Fluoromachine on my Mac it's:

{
    "vscode_custom_css.imports": [
    "file:///Users/katesmac/.vscode/extensions/webrender.synthwave-x-fluoromachine-0.0.9/synthwave-x-fluoromachine.css"
    ]
}

5. Quit VS Code and go to terminal so we can restart it with proper Permissions
6. Type sudo chown -R $(whoami) PATH TO CODE where PATH TO CODE is actually the file path, and you actually type ${whoami} as well

So I typed exactly:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron - the back slashes in front of the space are important

6a. According to Custom CSS and JS Loader, if you are using 'Insiders Branch' then the VS Code file path might be: /Applications/Visual Studio Code - Insiders.app/Contents/MacOS/Electron but idk what that means

7. Should prompt you for your password

8. Reopen VS Code

9. Command + Shift + P > "Reload Custom CSS and JS"

10. Restart VS Code one more time and hopefully you'll see the glow!

Notes to keep in mind:

• SPECIAL NOTE: If Code complains about that it is corrupted, simply click “Don't show again”.
• NOTE: Every time after Code is updated, please re-enable Custom CSS.
• NOTE: Every time you change the configuration, please re-enable Custom CSS.

In case anyone was wondering why they can't get the out of the box Synthwave '84 neon dreams command working on MacOS, you need to chown the application files a bit higher up than in the instructions in the snippet. sudo chown -R $(whoami) /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents worked for me, and so far doesn't seem to have broken anything. You could conceivably target a particular file to chown as well, but if you're on a single user system, this probably isn't a huge risk.

This works.