Which Reaper theme do you use?

[Liero]

I'm continually annoyed and/or surprised that REAPER still has a dedicated UI/graphics person who in my opinion just has a very bad sense of what looks good and is easily readable, making the DAW in its default state the ugliest of the "big" programs out there.

The default theme colors and icons are just a horrible mess to my eyes.

Luckily there are themes to choose from - my favorite has been RADO for about five years straight.

It's funny though, when I'm working in Reaper, I just want the UI to stay out of the way and default 5 does that, but in Bitwig I kinda like the bling...

How do those garish greens - especially in the icons and metering - stay out of the way? Try out RADO Theme Pack or the aforementioned Janne for something much more subdued and tasteful.

One of my main problems with default reaper is also the rather large amount of contrast between the brighest and darkest elements of the UI, which also happens to be the main difference to the other big DAW's, including Bitwig, which are much more restful to the eye in that regard.

[Tappistry]

I'm continually annoyed and/or surprised that REAPER still has a dedicated UI/graphics person who in my opinion just has a very bad sense of what looks good and is easily readable, making the DAW in its default state the ugliest of the "big" programs out there.

The default theme colors and icons are just a horrible mess to my eyes.

Luckily there are themes to choose from - my favorite has been RADO for about five years straight.

I think you’re kind of missing the point of Reaper: the appearance is completely customizable. They left the “stylizing” in the hands of users, it’s just a different approach than other DAWs.

I will agree, however, that the stock plugin interfaces could definitely use makeovers. Or, they should open up skinning possibilities for people to rework the interfaces of them.

[neverbeeninariot]

How do those garish greens - especially in the icons and metering - stay out of the way? Try out RADO Theme Pack or the aforementioned Janne for something much more subdued and tasteful.

One of my main problems with default reaper is also the rather large amount of contrast between the brighest and darkest elements of the UI, which also happens to be the main difference to the other big DAW's, including Bitwig, which are much more restful to the eye in that regard.

But that's just it, to me the default is nicely plain and (reasonably) quiet - I know what you mean about the meters but they really don't bother me at all.

I've tried many other themes, including the ones you mentioned, and I always end up going back to the default (ditto default 4, and 3 before that). That said, there is one I use occasionally when it's dark in the room or my eyes are tired, Fusion RJ mod, which is dark, low contrast and subtle, but most of the time, I'll take the default, thanks

But it's not for you, and that's ok. Luckily there are a stack of third party themes, so even if you were into Hello Kitty, you'd probably be sorted.

[Tappistry]

How do those garish greens - especially in the icons and metering - stay out of the way? Try out RADO Theme Pack or the aforementioned Janne for something much more subdued and tasteful.

One of my main problems with default reaper is also the rather large amount of contrast between the brighest and darkest elements of the UI, which also happens to be the main difference to the other big DAW's, including Bitwig, which are much more restful to the eye in that regard.

But that's just it, to me the default is nicely plain and (reasonably) quiet - I know what you mean about the meters but they really don't bother me at all.

I've tried many other themes, including the ones you mentioned, and I always end up going back to the default (ditto default 4, and 3 before that). That said, there is one I use occasionally when it's dark in the room or my eyes are tired, Fusion RJ mod, which is dark, low contrast and subtle, but most of the time, I'll take the default, thanks

But it's not for you, and that's ok. Luckily there are a stack of third party themes, so even if you were into Hello Kitty, you'd probably be sorted.

Oh please let there be a Hello Kitty theme. With cat faces for faders.

[neverbeeninariot]

I picked a poor example, and now I'm a little sad to report that there's not a hello kitty theme on the stash

Apologies if I got your hopes up, but I'd take that as a sign that it's your destiny to create one

[Tappistry]

I picked a poor example, and now I'm a little sad to report that there's not a hello kitty theme on the stash

Apologies if I got your hopes up, but I'd take that as a sign that it's your destiny to create one

That's really the only answer now.

[jonljacobi]

+1 on the dialogs being skinnable

[jusavaan]

I use my own mod of Kusanaka's Greyscale. I like it simple. Basic editing of themes is not hard, just couple of evenings of trying out what everything does. Gotta love Reaper.

[Dewdman42]

does anyone know if any themes out there support Retina/HiDPI? Every theme I have tried has tiny, blurry fonts.

[GreyLion]

Metric is HiDPI and looks pretty clear on my 4K 43" monitor. But it's just so weird that I find myself always going back to LCS_Blue.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=197202

With just about every theme I've tried, I've ended up tweaking the fonts to be about 4 points larger, sometimes more. It's an imperfect fix, as Walter doesn't let you have total control. The numbers on the volume thermometers are still unreadble, for instance. And sometimes larger fonts infringe on other bits of the GUI. I often end up tweaking colors also, so there's a clearer contrast between the fonts and their background. LCS_Blue works pretty well for me with the tweaks.

If you're trying to get clarity on a smaller screen, I'm not sure how much this info will help. You've turned on the experimental HiDPI setting, too, right? I'm not sure how much that's improved things.

And then there's the whole issue with unresizeable VSTs that are now too small...

[Dewdman42]

I’m not seeing the experimental hidpi setting to turn it on. On OS X

[GreyLion]

Sorry, I'm a PC guy, and spent my career in IT deliberately forgetting anything that I accidentally learned about Apple hardware and software, so they couldn't make me work on them.

I do get the impression that Reaper's OSX version isn't feature-identical to the Win version. I have no idea whether anything I wrote in my post above is relevant to your needs. Sorry... Good luck!

[Dewdman42]

Well the Mac is still using hidpi mode since it’s not an Apple branded monitor. Technically it’s the same thing, “Retina” is just Apple branding. Also a monitor that has retina classification means it is above a certain density of pixels per square inch that Apple decided the human eye can’t see the actual pixels from a typical viewing distance. So their retina displays all meet that criteria. Beyond that they are just using hidpi technology inside the software to smooth all the edges and corners intelligently. OS X actually does a much better job at it then windows does, but it’s the same concept. My display properties lists all the video modes out and some of them have “hidpi” next to them, and when I choose one of those I get the “retina” look to everything.

But repear doesn’t look good. And of course since I have a 4K monitor if I run it at native resolution everything is too too tiny with most apps. The main reason I got it is because in hidpi mode it looks absolutely stunning at Lower hidpi resolutions. But reaper does not look stunning the fonts are all tiny and fuzzy. If I scale up the interface it looks fuzzier.

It’s absolutely the worst app I have running on this display that way.

[jonljacobi]

I actually found a few themes I like, but then you open a dialog and... Yuk. Those should be theme-able as well.

[sufista]

@dewdman42 it's because all the themes use bitmap files all geared towards 72dpi. There is a hi-res theme in the works, maybe they'll get it sorted for version 6. Thats a big maybe.