Every Room Tells You Something About Who Lives There
Inkstone ships with ten handcrafted themes and a customization system deep enough to matter. You control colors, fonts, message bubbles, backgrounds, and animations, both globally and per-conversation. Think of it less as “settings” and more as interior design for the places where your stories live.
Free Themes
Yours from the start
Standard
Gold accents on dark brown, warm and classic, like a well-loved leather journal that’s been places. It has opinions about readability and none about showing off.
Crimson Noir
Wine-red accents on warm grey. This is the theme for stories that happen after midnight, for characters who smoke even when it’s bad for them. Moody, dramatic, unapologetic.
Midnight Ember
Amber-orange sparks against blue-grey, the visual equivalent of watching a city from a rooftop in winter. For stories with distance and heat in equal measure.
Forest Shadow
Sage green on dark green, earthy and tranquil, the kind of palette that makes you breathe slower. Stories written here tend to have rivers in them.
Five Ways to Make This Space Yours
Each can be customized globally or per-chat
Inkstone's appearance system breaks into five independent dimensions. Each can be customized globally or per-chat, which means the system doesn't just let you pick a look. It lets you build one.
Color Palette
The foundational layer: backgrounds, text, accents, bubble colors, borders, all of it. Every theme ships with its own palette, but you can mix and match across themes. Want Ember Sanctum's warmth with Neon Circuit's edge? Nobody's stopping you.
Font Pack
Typography changes more than most people expect. The right font doesn't just display your words, it inflects them. Standard is the workhorse. OpenDyslexic is always free, because accessibility is a baseline, never a premium feature.
Bubble Style
Message bubbles are the architecture of conversation. Inkstone lets you shape them. It's the kind of detail you notice once and then can't unsee.
Backgrounds
What lives behind your messages. Built-in animated backgrounds are tuned to their theme: Scan Lines, Sakura Petals, Candle Flicker, Nebula, Frost Refraction, Abyssal Depths. You can also upload your own image and layer animated overlays on top.
Animation Pack
Motion is the dimension most people underestimate. Control message entrances, typing indicators, page transitions, streaming cursors, and special effects like CRT vignette, card shimmer, parchment noise, and stardust burst.
Backgrounds in Detail
Where the themes start to breathe
Upload your own PNG, JPG, or WebP image as a custom background, then layer any of the animated overlays on top. Scan lines over your photo. Sakura petals falling over your artwork. Your background, Inkstone's atmosphere.
The Animation System
Four categories of motion
Syntax Highlighting Colors
The words carry meaning. The colors carry feeling.
Beyond the five main dimensions, you can customize the colors used for different types of roleplay text.
| Text Type | What It Highlights |
|---|---|
| Dialogue Color | Quoted speech in conversation |
| Action Color | Action text wrapped in *asterisks* |
| Bold Emphasis Color | Emphasized text in **double asterisks** |
| Plain Text Color | Everything else |
Each palette provides a pool of colors to choose from, so your syntax highlighting always harmonizes with your theme. Both matter.
Global vs. Per-Chat: The Layering System
Three levels, each overriding the last
Layer 1: Theme Defaults
Palette, fonts, bubbles, animations, background
Layer 2: Global Overrides (Own)
Any dimension you've set to “Own” in Personalization
Layer 3: Per-Chat Overrides
Anything customized for this specific conversation
The “Make It Yours” screen is command central. Change anything here and it ripples across every chat by default. For each dimension, you toggle between Shared (grey), which defers to the theme's default, and Own (gold), which uses your custom selection. It's the difference between living in a furnished apartment and furnishing it yourself.
In any chat, tap the options menu, then “Appearance” to open the appearance sheet. Your noir detective can live in Crimson Noir's shadows while your fantasy epic unfolds under Astral Grimoire's stars, and your cozy slice-of-life sits in a room you decorated yourself. Every character gets the world they deserve.
Theme Selection
Settings > Personalization
To change your theme, go to Settings > Personalization. The theme picker shows all ten themes in a two-column grid. Each card displays the theme's accent color gradient and name. Free themes apply instantly on tap. Locked premium themes show a lock icon, and tapping reveals a “Part of [Theme Name]” message. Unlocked premium themes display a “Premium” label and apply on tap.
The selected theme earns a gold border. An active checkmark appears in the color gradient circle. It's a small thing, but knowing exactly where you are matters.
Display Settings
Your eyes, your call
Adjustable from 75% to 125% of the default. You'll find it in two places: Settings > Display > Font Size (with a slider and a “The quick brown fox” preview), and Settings > Personalization as an inline slider. The setting applies globally.
How It All Fits Together
Inkstone resolves your final appearance by layering three levels, each one overriding the last where it has an opinion. It starts with the theme's defaults: palette, fonts, bubbles, animations, background. Then it applies your global overrides, any dimension you've set to “Own.” Finally it checks for per-chat overrides, anything you've customized for this specific conversation.
The result is a fully resolved appearance that can be unique to each conversation or consistent across the whole app. You can go deep on this, giving every character a world that fits them, or you can pick one theme and let it carry everything. Inkstone will meet you wherever you are. It just wants you to like the view.