Make Plainva yours: themes and density
I spend more hours a day looking at this app than at almost anything else I own, so the idea that it should look however a designer decided once, forever, never sat right with me. Plainva ships a real theme system, because you get to decide what “home” looks like, not me.
A dozen themes, built on the same foundation
Past the obligatory light and dark there’s a dozen themes I actually put care into — Nord, Solarized, Gruvbox and Catppuccin, each in light and dark, plus Paper/E-Ink, Sepia, Forest, Midnight/OLED, High Contrast, and, because I couldn’t help myself, a phosphor CRT theme in green or amber, scanlines and all. Each one is more than a colour swap — corner radius, the split between the UI font and the font your notes are written in, all come with it — and you choose from preview cards showing a small mock of the real app, so you know what you’re getting before you commit.
There’s also a separate density switch, Comfortable or Compact, that tightens the tree, menus, tables and controls without ever touching your note text. None of this is bolted on afterward: it all sits on one proper design-token system underneath, which is the only reason a dozen themes stay consistent everywhere in the app — right down to the databases and the graph — and the only reason adding one more is cheap instead of a rewrite.
And a couple you’ll have to find yourself
A few themes aren’t in the list at all. I’ll just say the app has a soft spot for a certain starship’s console, and leave it there. Building something you use every day should occasionally get to be a little fun — for me, and hopefully for you too.
- Try it: plainva.com
— Marco