Themes and tab completion

The : prompt has a picker of its own. Type :theme (with a space after it) and press Tab: the bundled themes appear above the prompt, and Tab cycles the highlight through them. As it moves, the editor previews each theme live. Enter keeps the one that’s showing; Escape puts the old theme back.

The same completion works for any : command. Type : and press Tab to page through every command name, or :the and Tab to complete the command itself — Helix will finish it as :theme for you.

Try a few themes in the editor. gruvbox and catppuccin_mocha are in the list, and :theme with no name at all tells you which one is active.

Whichever theme you pick stays with you as you move through the course, so settle on one you like.

Where to go next

Space / searches the text of every file at once, and Space j opens the jump list — the places your cursor has recently jumped from, which a later lesson covers properly. Both are pickers too, and everything you learned here applies: type to filter, arrows to move, Enter to choose, Escape to get out.