Tiranga: A VS Code Theme That Wears the Flag

Every developer has strong opinions about their editor theme — and honestly, they should. You stare at it for hours a day. So instead of reaching for another shade of "midnight blue with cyan accents," I built something with a bit more identity: Tiranga, a VS Code theme (Tiranga Theme - Visual Studio Marketplace) inspired by the Indian national flag.

The idea

The Tiranga — saffron, white, and green, with the navy blue Ashoka Chakra at its center — is one of the most recognizable flags in the world, and its palette translates surprisingly well to a code editor. Saffron pops against a dark background without being harsh on the eyes. Green is a natural fit for "positive" signals like git additions. And navy blue gives the UI chrome a grounded, official feel without going full black.

So rather than treat the flag as a literal banner across the screen, I pulled its four colors out and assigned each one a job:

Everything else — the editor background, sidebars, panels — stays a deep, near-black navy (#0B0F14) so the flag colors have room to breathe instead of competing with a busy UI.

What's in the box

Tiranga is a full VS Code color theme, meaning it doesn't just recolor your syntax highlighting — it covers the whole editor:

• Editor & syntax — keywords, strings, functions, types, and comments are all tuned for contrast and readability, not just palette accuracy.
• Activity bar, sidebar, status bar, and tabs — themed consistently so nothing feels bolted on.
• Terminal ANSI colors — mapped to the same palette, so your terminal output matches the rest of the editor.
• Git decorations — added/modified/deleted files use green, saffron, and red respectively, so the theme still follows normal editor conventions where it matters.
• An icon to match — a rounded extension icon with the tricolor bands and a 24-spoke Ashoka Chakra, so it looks right at home in the Extensions view too.

Why build a theme at all

Honestly? Partly for fun, partly because most "flag-inspired" themes I'd seen either used the colors too literally (giant stripes across your code, which gets old fast) or too timidly (one accent color and nothing else). I wanted something that felt like a real editor theme first — one you'd actually want to code in for eight hours — that happened to be built entirely from a flag's palette.

Try it

The theme is available as a standard VS Code extension. To use it download it from:

Tiranga Theme - Visual Studio Marketplace

What's next

A few things on the roadmap if there's interest:

• A light variant — same palette, inverted for daytime coding.
• Bracket pair colorization tuned to the tricolor palette.

If you try it out and have thoughts on the balance of colors — too much saffron, not enough green, whatever — I'd love to hear it. Themes are personal, and this one's meant to evolve.

— Built with VS Code's theme API, a lot of hex codes, and more flag trivia than I expected to learn along the way.