Appearance Customization

RealTimeX now exposes appearance customization through two main settings areas:

• Settings > Customization > Interface for quick day-to-day preferences
• Settings > Customization > Themes for built-in themes, custom themes, and theme editing

Depending on your role and deployment, you may also see other customization-related settings, but these two pages are the primary user-facing surfaces.

Interface settings

The Interface page is the fast path for personal presentation preferences. It currently includes:

• Theme: choose the active visual theme
• Appearance mode: follow System, or force Dark or Light
• Display language: change the app language
• Chat message alignment: keep all messages left-aligned, or place your own messages on the right

Use this page when you want to change how RealTimeX feels for you without creating or editing theme files.

Themes

The Themes page is where you manage reusable visual themes for the app.

Built-in themes

RealTimeX includes built-in themes that you can select directly. These are the fastest option when you want a different look without creating anything custom.

You can also set the current appearance mode here:

• System: follow your operating system preference
• Dark
• Light

If a theme only supports one mode, RealTimeX falls back to the mode that theme actually provides.

Custom themes

Custom themes appear in a separate section from built-ins. From this page you can:

• import a theme from a JSON file
• export the current theme as JSON
• create a new custom theme
• edit an existing custom theme
• delete a custom theme

This makes it practical to keep a house style for your team, move themes between machines, or start from an exported theme and refine it.

Editing a custom theme

Creating or editing a theme opens the theme editor. The editor is intended for advanced visual customization rather than simple preference changes.

The editor includes:

• a JSON editor for the theme file
• validation before save
• a visual preview
• a Theme Assistant panel to help edit the theme file

Custom themes are saved as theme JSON files. RealTimeX supports modern theme files with separate dark and light sections, and the theme schema also supports typography-related tokens in addition to color tokens.

When to use Interface vs Themes

Use Interface when you want to:

• switch theme quickly
• change dark/light behavior
• change language
• adjust chat layout

Use Themes when you want to:

• manage a library of themes
• import or export theme files
• create a custom visual identity
• edit colors, surfaces, and other theme tokens in detail

Practical workflow

For most users, the simplest workflow is:

1. Start in Themes and choose a built-in theme you like.
2. Use Interface to decide whether it should follow System, Dark, or Light.
3. If you need something more specific, export the current theme or create a new custom one and refine it in the theme editor.