How to change UI theme on IntelliJ and Android Studio

This post is deprecated, please read updated this tutorial how to change the color scheme from .jar file.

If you are tired of the default look or darcula theme of IntelliJ (tested on 2017.x and 2018.x versions) or Android Studio , you can switch to a better looking theme . This is a very short process

idea-obsidian

IntelliJ with Obsidian.jar theme and darcula

1 Select your theme

color-themes.com has plenty of themes ( Sublime Text 2 , Monokai,) . Download the .jar file . Roboticket.jar is my current theme

 Import the theme

Import to IntelliJ or Android Studio by going to File -> import settings -> and select the  .jar file you downloaded.
Select All . press OK. Then Restart your IDE.

idea_color_scheme

Note : if you use darcula theme previously , you will notice the new theme is only applied to  the Text Editor. The light theme clearly contrasts

idea-darcula-roboticket

3 Appearance theme

On Mac , go to Preferences -> Appearance  . You can also use the shortcut Preferences -> search theme on the top left search bar
Next to Theme , Select Default . Or Darcula if you are using a dark theme .
Restart your IDE.

idea-appearance-dark

4 The final look

 idea-final

Roboticket.jar

Android studio after 15 days

Shortly after Android studio came out, I installed it at work. As a long user of IntelliJ ( BTW I visited their office in Prague ), my IntelliJ projects were imported into Android studio.android-studio

What’s the difference between the two ?

Just like ADT Bundle bundles Eclipse + ADT plugin +  Android SDK now , Android Studio is pre-packaged with the Android SDK, so it already knows about android.sdk.path . In short it ‘s easier to install Android Studio than IntelliJ + Android SDK.  IntelliJ Community edition is more general. As this quote from Yole ( from JetBrains team )

Yole : The main point of this for Google is being able to have an experience focused on Android – as an example, Android Studio bundles the Android SDK and configures it automatically for you. IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition has a broader focus; for it, Android development is just one of the many scenarios it supports.

As far as I remember IntelliJ supported Android since 2011. Back then, there was no  graphical preview for the layout editor. But I used it for the fast code completion and faster compilation time. IntelliJ Community Edition bundles a Android plugin, so there was no need to download the equivalent of ADT.

But still for me,  Android Studio == IntelliJ specialized on Android . I use their names interchangeably

Stability

As an early preview  (currently v0.1.1 ) , I caught and filed the issue number 56000 ( round number , am I lucky ? )  that IntelliJ 12 did not have . I had to switch back to IntelliJ. After a few days ,  I opened Android Studio and an upgrade notification popped up. The issue was fixed.

Choices

Now there are two official IDE for Android : Eclipse and IntelliJ

Eclipse Android Studio
Version Control System ( VCS ) Need a plugin for each VCS. Update with an external VCS client, you need to refresh the workspace VCS integrated. It supports Git, subversion, mercurial. When you update with an external VCS client, IntelliJ will sync automatically . WIN
Code completion faster and indexes the world. WIN

There is one area that Eclipse beats IntelliJ : the number of plugins available. I only switches to Eclipse when there is a large team that uses Eclipse because we can easily share dependencies with the .properties files, whereas IntelliJ use .iml files.

By default, Android developers used Eclipse by default. Now Google officially supports two of them. My current choice is IntelliJ ( or Android Studio ). I don’t like the darkcula theme, I prefer light color . Matter of taste like WordPress themes . And  you , what will be your choice ?