We're deviating from the usual application spotlight this week and bringing attention to a project that is likely to be a bit more divisive – the dark theme for self-hosted (and some non-self-hosted) applications aptly named Dracula. Of course, we use the term divisive in jest and not because the developers have crazy ideologies or are laden with scandals. Instead, the theme tends to be somewhat controversial in that users are typically either firmly for or against its usage given the color scheme it utilizes.
Check it out for yourself:
![](https://selfh.st/content/images/2023/02/notepad-plus-dracula.png)
Created by developer Zeno Rocha in 2013, the theme isn't driven by any hidden psychology that subliminally influences its users to be more productive but was developed as a way to create uniformity across the applications in Rocha's workflow. It's since become wildly popular (it even has its own Wikipedia page!) and is available for over 300 applications at the time this post was published.
We've implemented Dracula throughout our own personal and professional workflows, theming apps like Notepad++, Visual Studio Code, Windows Terminal, Discord, and several other self-hosted apps through GitHub user Gilbn's theme.park CSS and Docker mods. A few of the theme's wallpapers also make an appearance in my PC background slideshow.
As an added bonus, the developers announced last year that they were open-sourcing the theme and making it free for developers to implement in their own projects.
Below is a poll we've created to allow selfh.st/ed's own users to voice their opinion on the genius or sacrilege of Dracula, as well as some additional screenshots courtesy of the theme's website.
As always, happy selfh.st/ing!
![](https://selfh.st/content/images/2023/02/dracula-vs-code.png)
![](https://selfh.st/content/images/2023/02/dracula-vim.png)
![](https://selfh.st/content/images/2023/02/dracula-obsidian.png)
![](https://selfh.st/content/images/2023/02/dracula-libreoffice.png)
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