Changing NetBeans to “Dark Mode”
The default color scheme for NetBeans is a harsh, unrelenting brightness that many people don’t appreciate. Here’s how to change that.
When you open NetBeans, you are generally greeted with the Start Page that looks something like the following.
In order to change the appearance to a much more eye friendly color, the easiest way is with a plugin. To access the plugin, you can go to one of two places, either the button on the center of the start page or Tools>Plugins. Both are highlighted below:
When you click on either a window will appear with a long list and several tabs across the top. Make sure that you have the “Available Plugins (1)” tab selected, for me it was selected by default. The number that appears on the tab doesn’t matter.
Then there is a search bar on the right hand side that you can use to quickly find the right plugin. I went with the Darcula LAF for NetBeans but I also saw that there is a Dark Look And Feel Themes released by NetBeans. Once you have seleved the plugin(s) you want, push the Install button on the bottom left.
A small note on security, 3rd party Plugins like Darcula are community contributed and are not released or supported by NetBeans and so there is no guarantee on the security of the plugin. Install any 3rd party plugins at your own risk. If you aren’t comfortable with that risk, there are first party solutions like the one above.
Once you press Install, another window will pop up displaying the plugins to be installed, and when you hit Next >, it will prompt you to read and accept the license agreement before installation.
After accepting and pressing Install, it will start to install the pligun before poping open another window warning you about the security of 3rd party plugins. I mean, at least for me when I installed Darcula…
After pressing Continue >, it finished installing and prompted me to Restart IDE Now. At that point, press Finish and it will restart NetBeans. Once the program relaunches, it should be much easier on the eyes.
Much better…
