alacritty

Generates a TOML colour theme for Alacritty, the GPU-accelerated cross-platform terminal emulator. The output is a single fragment file you import from your main alacritty.toml; Alacritty watches its config tree and applies new colours to every open window the moment the file changes on disk.

Installation

Built into tinct — nothing to install separately. tinct generate -o alacritty works out of the box.

Quick start

tinct generate -i image -p ~/Pictures/wallpaper.jpg -o alacritty

Generated files

File	Path	Role
tinct-colors.toml	~/.config/alacritty/tinct-colors.toml	Single-file palette containing [colors.*] tables (primary, cursor, selection, search, hints, footer bar, normal, bright, dim).

Generated format

[colors]
[colors.primary]
background = "#1e1e2e"
foreground = "#cdd6f4"

[colors.normal]
black = "#45475a"
red = "#f38ba8"
green = "#a6e3a1"
yellow = "#f9e2af"
blue = "#89b4fa"
magenta = "#f5c2e7"
cyan = "#94e2d5"
white = "#bac2de"

[colors.bright]
black = "#585b70"
red = "#f38ba8"
green = "#a6e3a1"
yellow = "#f9e2af"
blue = "#89b4fa"
magenta = "#f5c2e7"
cyan = "#94e2d5"
white = "#a6adc8"

Integration

Alacritty has no auto-include directory, so you import the file by hand. Add the following to your alacritty.toml:

[general]
import = [
  "~/.config/alacritty/tinct-colors.toml",
]

(Older Alacritty versions used a top-level import = [...] array — both forms still work.) Once the line is in place you never need to touch your alacritty.toml again; re-running tinct generate overwrites tinct-colors.toml and Alacritty picks it up live.

Reload behaviour

Automatic

None from the plugin — Alacritty's built-in live_config.reload (on by default) watches the imported file and reloads colours into every open window as soon as tinct generate finishes writing it.

Manual fallback

If you've disabled live_config.reload, send Alacritty the reload key chord (default Ctrl+Shift+R on Linux, Cmd+Shift+R on macOS), or restart Alacritty.

Uninstall / revert

1. Remove the import line from your ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml:

   Delete the entry for tinct-colors.toml from the import = [...] array (and drop the [general] section or array entirely if it now contains nothing else).

2. Delete the generated file:

   rm ~/.config/alacritty/tinct-colors.toml

3. Reload to drop the theme:

   Saving alacritty.toml triggers the live reload. If you've disabled it, press Ctrl+Shift+R (or Cmd+Shift+R on macOS).

4. External state: this plugin only writes to ~/.config/alacritty/. No further cleanup is required.

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--alacritty.output-dir	~/.config/alacritty	Override the output directory

Colour role mapping

Alacritty table	Property	Tinct role
[colors.primary]	background	background
[colors.primary]	foreground	foreground
[colors.primary]	dim_foreground	foregroundMuted
[colors.primary]	bright_foreground	foreground
[colors.cursor]	text	background
[colors.cursor]	cursor	accent1
[colors.vi_mode_cursor]	cursor	accent2
[colors.selection]	background	accent1
[colors.search.matches]	background	warning
[colors.search.focused_match]	background	accent1
[colors.hints.start]	background	warning
[colors.hints.end]	background	success
[colors.footer_bar]	foreground	foreground
[colors.footer_bar]	background	backgroundMuted
[colors.normal] / [colors.dim]	black..white	ANSI black..white
[colors.bright]	black..white	ANSI brightblack..brightwhite

Customising the template

Extract the default template to override it:

tinct plugins templates dump -o alacritty -l ~/.config/tinct/templates/alacritty

This writes ~/.config/tinct/templates/alacritty/tinct-colors.toml.tmpl. Tinct uses your version in preference to the embedded default.

See the templating reference for the available functions and palette accessors.

Troubleshooting

Colours unchanged after tinct generate

Check that the import is wired up and the file was written:

grep tinct-colors ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml
ls -l ~/.config/alacritty/tinct-colors.toml

If both look right but nothing changed visually, your alacritty.toml probably defines its own [colors.*] tables after the import — explicit values win. Move the offending blocks above the [general] section or delete them.

"live_config.reload" was disabled

Re-enable it by adding live_config_reload = true to your alacritty.toml, or press the reload key chord after each generation.

Import path with ~ doesn't expand

Alacritty does expand ~ in import paths since 0.13, but very old builds don't. If you're on an ancient version, use the full path:

import = ["/home/you/.config/alacritty/tinct-colors.toml"]

Related plugins

• ghostty, kitty, wezterm — other GPU-accelerated terminals.
• tmux — pair the terminal palette with a matching multiplexer status bar.