Theme customization — opacity, blur, colors
The five built-in themes — Glass, Dark, Light, High Contrast, Neon — are tuned defaults. Pro unlocks the next layer: per-theme sliders that let you tweak opacity, border, blur, icon treatment, and the four core colors. This guide is the reference for every customization control, what range each slider accepts, and a few recipes for matching brand palettes or adapting a theme to specific lighting.
Where to find the controls
Open Settings → Menu → Appearance. Pick a theme from the segmented picker. On Pro, a divider appears below the picker, then four icon sliders, an Icon only toggle, another divider, and four color pickers.
Customizations apply to the currently-selected theme — they don't affect the other themes. Switching to another theme shows that theme's customizations. Resetting a theme to its factory defaults isn't a one-click action; you'd manually drag the sliders back. (See below for a workaround.)
The four icon sliders
Each is a small icon slider — drag the icon to set the value. Tooltip on hover shows the parameter name.
| Control | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Opacity (half-circle icon) | 0.3 – 1.0 | How opaque the wedge background is. Lower = more wallpaper bleeds through (Glass-like). Higher = solid panel that ignores what's behind it. The minimum 0.3 floor prevents the menu from disappearing entirely. |
| Border (dashed-square icon) | 0.5 – 3.0 pt | Thickness of the wedge outline in points. 0.5 is hairline (subtle separation). 1.0 is the default for most themes. 3.0 is bold — useful for High Contrast and accessibility setups. |
| Blur (aqi-medium icon) | 0 – 1.0 | How much the wallpaper behind the wedge is frosted. 0 = no blur (sharp wallpaper visible through opacity). 1.0 = full vibrancy blur (Glass theme default). Affects readability over busy wallpapers. |
| Grayscale (half-circle vertical icon) | 0 – 1.0 | Desaturation applied to app icons inside wedges. 0 = full color (vibrant). 1.0 = monochrome (matches OS-level dock icons-as-glyphs). Glass defaults to 0.8 for a subtle desaturated look that matches the frosted aesthetic. |
Practical guidance: most users only ever touch Opacity and Grayscale. Border and Blur are second-order — useful when you have a specific look in mind, but the defaults work for the vast majority of wallpapers.
Icon only — the hide-labels toggle
Below the four sliders is a checkbox: Icon only. When on, wedge labels (the app name underneath each icon) disappear, leaving just the icon glyph. Wedges also tighten visually because they no longer reserve label space.
When to enable it:
- You have iconic apps with distinctive logos. Once your hand knows "Slack-direction = top-left," reading "Slack" under the wedge is redundant.
- You're maxing wedge density. Hiding labels lets you fit more wedges per ring without crowding.
- You're recording a clean screencast. Icon-only menus look minimal in video.
When to leave it off:
- You're new to your layout. The first week of muscle-memory building benefits from labels.
- Your wedges are non-app actions. A custom-action wedge that runs an AppleScript is a generic-looking icon — the label is what tells you what it does.
- You have multi-ring layouts where outer rings need disambiguation.
The four color pickers
Below the icon-only toggle, a divider, then four NSColor pickers. Each opens the standard macOS color panel — pick by RGB, HSL, hex, or eyedropper.
| Color | What it changes | Glass default |
|---|---|---|
| Highlight | The color of the currently-selected wedge — the tint that washes over the wedge your cursor is on. Most visible color in the menu since it's where your eye lands. | White at 80% alpha |
| Text | Wedge labels and any text inside the menu (window-expansion titles, etc.). | White at 80% alpha |
| Border | The color of the wedge outline. Thickness is set by the Border slider above. | White at 15% alpha |
| Dead zone | The center safe-cancel circle's fill color. | Black at 85% alpha |
All four use macOS's NSColor picker, so you can copy hex values from any color tool. The picker stores RGB + alpha — alpha less than 1.0 makes the color see-through.
Recipes for common palettes
Match a brand color (e.g. Linear purple)
Start with Glass. Set Highlight to #5E6AD2 (Linear's purple). Leave Text and Border alone — Glass's white-with-alpha keeps things legible. Result: subtle white frosted menu with a purple tint when you hover. Doesn't scream "I'm purple" but feels on-brand.
If you want it bolder: Opacity → 0.85, Border → 1.5pt, Border color matches Highlight.
Solarized Dark
Start with Dark. Background base color (via Border + Highlight subtly) tints toward Solarized's blue-green. Highlight: #268BD2 (Solarized blue). Text: #93A1A1 (Solarized base1). Border: #586E75 (Solarized base01). Dead zone: #002B36 (Solarized base03).
Gives the menu an IDE-matched palette that looks like an extension of your editor.
OLED battery saver
Start with Dark. Opacity → 1.0. Blur → 0. Border → 0.5pt. Border color: pure black. Text color: dim gray. Dead zone: pure black at 100% alpha.
Pure-black backgrounds = pixels off on OLED displays = literally less battery draw when the menu is up. Marginal but real on a 14" MacBook Pro.
High-contrast for low-vision
Start with High Contrast. Border → 3.0pt (max). Border color: pure yellow at 100% alpha. Highlight: pure yellow. Text: pure white. Dead zone: pure black.
Combine with Color-Blind Safe Mode (Settings → Advanced → Accessibility) and a 1.5×–2.0× Menu Scale. The result is a menu that's readable from across the room.
Match Glass to a particular wallpaper
Use the eyedropper inside the macOS color picker on your wallpaper to grab a complementary tone. Apply it to Highlight at ~70% alpha and to Border at ~25% alpha. Leave the other Glass defaults. The menu feels "of" the wallpaper rather than overlaid on it.
Resetting a theme to defaults
There's no one-click "reset this theme" button today. Workaround paths:
- Switch to another theme then back — picks up the source theme's defaults again, but only if you haven't customized that one.
- Settings → Advanced → Layout & Reset → Reset to Defaults — resets every Advanced setting to factory, including all theme customizations across all themes. Heavy-handed; preserves your wedge layout but wipes all UX tuning.
- Export before customizing — Settings → About → Export as a JSON snapshot. Imports restore the saved theme state. The recommended workflow: export → experiment → import to revert if needed.
Caveats & current limits
- No per-profile theme overrides at the customization level. Each profile carries its own theme + customizations, so different profiles can have different looks — but within a single profile, all rings share the appearance.
- No gradient or pattern fills — the four colors are flat. There's no "Highlight = gradient from purple to blue" today. Use opacity to soften flat colors instead.
- No font picker — the menu uses the system font and you can't change it. You can only change text color and the icon-only toggle.
- Customizations don't export to other Macs without import. They live in your Swik prefs file, so a fresh install doesn't see them. Use Export/Import to move them; see the Import & Export guide.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Sliders are missing / greyed out | Free tier — customization is Pro | The five built-in themes still work fine without Pro. Upgrade to unlock the tuning layer. |
| Menu disappears at low opacity | Opacity slider hit its 0.3 floor and you're on a similarly-colored wallpaper | Raise opacity to 0.5+, or change Border color to a contrast that's visible against the wallpaper. |
| Icons look wrong after grayscale change | App icons that depend on color (Slack, Spotify) lose recognizability past ~0.5 grayscale | Drop grayscale back to 0.5 or lower for color-coded apps; or accept the desaturated look as a trade-off. |
| Can't see the wedge highlight on hover | Highlight color too close to the wedge background | Pick a color with at least 30 luminance points of difference from the underlying theme. The macOS color picker shows "Brightness" in HSB mode. |
| Customizations stuck after switching themes | Customizations are stored per-theme, but if both themes share certain colors via profile import, they may both look modified | Reset via Advanced → Layout & Reset → Reset to Defaults if the customizations have drifted across themes. |
Frequently asked questions
Are customizations per-theme or global?
Per-theme. Each of the five built-in themes has its own slider and color values. Switching themes shows that theme's saved values. So you can have a tuned Glass for daytime and a tuned Dark for evening, both available without losing each other.
Can I create a brand-new theme from scratch?
Not as a separate slot in the picker today — you'd be customizing one of the five built-ins. The closest workflow: pick whichever built-in is closest to what you want, customize it, and export. The export captures your custom values as the new "Glass" (or whatever base you started from).
Why does the Opacity floor at 0.3 instead of 0?
At 0% opacity the menu is invisible, and "invisible menu" is a footgun — you'd summon it, see nothing, and assume Swik was broken. The 30% floor guarantees you can always see a faint outline of where the menu rendered.
Does customization affect performance?
Marginally. High blur intensity is the only customization with a real GPU cost on older Intel Macs — it triggers a vibrancy effect that requires re-sampling the wallpaper each frame. If you're on 2018-era hardware and the menu feels slightly laggy, drop Blur to 0.
Can I tint just the dead zone, not the wedges?
Yes — the Dead Zone color picker is independent from the others. Set it to a saturated color while leaving Highlight, Text, and Border at theme defaults; the cancel circle becomes a visible dot you can aim for, while wedges stay neutral.
Swik — a radial menu for macOS
Launch anything. One gesture. Free for five wedges, $9 one-time for unlimited. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
Download for macOS