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Delta always defaults to dark mode — terminal background detection broken #119
Description
Activity
Hmm, I think I have the opposite problem. My diffnav seems to think the terminal is in light mode but I'm in dark mode.
Thanks for the detailed explanation and the pointer to
tea.RequestBackgroundColor()/BackgroundColorMsg.IsDark()— that was really helpful to understand the root cause.I’m also hitting this on a light terminal and getting poor contrast with dark‑mode deltas inside diffnav.
If automatically detecting the terminal background via Bubbletea is not a quick fix, would you be open to adding a smaller, intermediate step to let users control the delta theme explicitly?
For example:
- A config option like
delta_theme = "dark" | "light"indiffnav’s config, or - A CLI flag like
--delta-theme=dark/--delta-theme=light, or - A way to pass extra args to delta (e.g.
delta_args = "--light --paging=never"), so we can force--dark/--lightfrom the outside.
This wouldn’t fix the auto‑detection issue, but it would unblock users who are okay with manually matching their terminal theme, without having to wrap or modify delta themselves.
Totally understand if you’d rather hold out for the “proper” Bubbletea‑based solution, but I figured I’d suggest a simpler escape hatch in case it’s easy to add and helps people in the meantime.
Thanks again for diffnav — aside from this light‑mode issue it’s been really nice to use.
- A config option like
Describe the bug
Delta always renders with dark mode colors inside diffnav, even on light terminal backgrounds. Standalone delta detects correctly.
Delta's detection sends OSC 11 to the terminal and reads the response. Inside diffnav this fails because:
diffFile()/diffDir()pipe delta's stdout to a buffer —is_terminal()returns false, detection skips, defaults to dark--detect-dark-light alwaysraces with bubbletea's input readerSame root cause as jesseduffield/lazygit#4550.
Related: #5, #86, #89
To Reproduce
echo "" | delta— correct light colorsgit diff HEAD~1 | diffnav— dark colors, poor contrastExpected behavior
Diffs should match the terminal's actual background. Bubbletea v2 provides
tea.RequestBackgroundColor()which queries OSC 11 during init and deliversBackgroundColorMsgwith.IsDark(). diffnav can pass--dark/--lightto delta based on this.I have an implementation with tests ready if you'd like a PR.
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