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How Do I install Custom Color Themes for SSMS?

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Tim Cartwright edited this page Jul 22, 2018 · 13 revisions

VSColorThemes

You can now install the VSColorThemes extension to SSMS. Installing these themes gives you many new themes:

Theme Options

However, these themes do suffer from the same issue with the built in Dark theme with the unreadable Object Explorer right click. I have updated some of the colors in the Dark themes to make them readable.

There are two ways to install these themes:

Installer

I have created an installer. Just download the SSMSThemeEditor repo as a zip or clone it. Then run the install.ps1 using powershell from the clone or from the unzipped folder. The installer will attempt to install the themes to every ssms you have installed.

Manual installation

  • Download the VSColorThemes vsix from here
  • Unzip the vsix to a temporary folder
  • Find the path of your ssms.exe. There is an Extensions directory
  • Copy the VSColorThemes folder you unzipped and all contents to the SSMS Extensions directory: Extensions\VSColorThemes**
  • Overwrite the themes in Extensions\VSColorThemes\Themes** with the customized themes found here

Example SSMS Screenshot with themes installed

Example SSMS

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