Appearance

Appearance controls how the Acira window looks: light or dark, a color finish, how see-through the frame is, how large the interface is and how fast it moves. Websites keep their own colors.

Where to find it

• Open the Acira menu, choose Settings (Ctrl+,), then choose Appearance in the list on the left. Press / or Ctrl+F inside Settings to search for a control by name.
• Right-click an empty part of the toolbar and choose Customize appearance. This opens a small Appearance panel with the most used controls.
• Add the Appearance button to the toolbar. It is hidden by default. See Toolbar and menu.
• The setup screens ask for light, dark or auto when you start Acira. See setup.

On a Mac, use Cmd where this page says Ctrl.

Light, dark or auto

Under Settings › Appearance › Theme › Appearance choose one of three cards:

• Light
• Dark
• Auto follows your operating system.

On Linux, a switch named Match my system theme sits under the cards. It follows your desktop's light or dark setting and accent color. Turning it on sets Appearance to Auto, and for a profile that keeps its own choice it sets that profile to Auto. Choosing Light or Dark stops the matching. It is off by default, and it does not appear on Windows or a Mac.

The default is Dark. Setup asks you to choose light, dark or follow your system before you start browsing.

When you have two or more regular profiles, an Applies to row appears under the cards. Choose All profiles or This profile. With This profile, that profile keeps the choice and the others follow the shared setting. See Profiles.

Finish

A finish colors the window frame, tabs, toolbar and accent. Acira's own pages follow it. Websites are unchanged. The finish picker is under Settings › Appearance › Theme › Finish and in the Appearance panel.

Each swatch is split in two. The top left half is the light tone and the bottom right half is the dark tone. A finish applies when you click it, or press Enter or Space on it. It does not apply when you hover. The arrow keys move between swatches, and the name of the selected finish shows next to the swatches.

There are twelve finishes, in this order:

1. Porcelain (default)
2. Burgundy
3. Navy
4. Ocean
5. Sky
6. Emerald Green
7. Alpine Green
8. Deep Purple
9. Sand
10. Stone
11. Silver
12. Graphite

The finish is shared by all profiles. It cannot be set for one profile.

Site color

With Site color on, the sidebar and the bands around the page glow softly in the color of the site you are on. The page itself, menus and Acira's own pages are not recolored. Find it under Settings › Appearance › Theme › Site color. It has three choices.

• The color comes from the page. Acira uses the page's own theme color if it sets one. If not, it uses the top edge of the page when that edge is one flat color, and failing that the site's icon. A site that is only white, black or grey gives no color, and then there is no glow at all.
• The color is worked out on your computer. Nothing about it goes to Acira or to any other server.
• Text stays readable. If a color would make text on the sidebar or the toolbar hard to read, Acira makes the glow less colorful, or leaves it out.
• When you switch tabs or go to another site, the glow fades to the new color over about half a second. With Animation speed set to None, or with reduced motion on, it changes at once. It is hidden in high-contrast mode.
• In a private window, a Tor window and a locked workspace, the frame keeps Acira's own colors.
• The glow is laid over your sidebar color, so custom colors you set under Colors are kept.
• The same choice also controls the selected tab. The selected tab, and the tab under the pointer, get a thin ring and a soft glow in the color of that tab's icon. When you switch tabs, the raised card glides to the new tab and carries the glow with it, blending from one color to the other. A sleeping tab, a private or Tor tab, and a tab whose icon is grey, black or white have no glow. The Favorite you are on gets a ring in its icon's color too. See Sidebar. With Off, none of these glow. Tab corners are rounder in either case.

Window opacity

The slider runs from 40% to 100%. The default is 64%. A higher value is more solid. At 100% the window is fully solid and Reduce transparency turns on. Turn Reduce transparency off again and Acira restores the last see-through value you had.

Find it in Settings › Appearance › Colors › Window opacity. Open the Colors group by selecting its title. The Appearance panel has the same slider.

Custom colors

Under Settings › Appearance › Colors four rows let you override one part of the finish. Each row has a color well, a hex field and a Reset button.

A row reads Follows the selected finish until you change it. After that it reads Custom color. Type a six digit code such as #4d1821, or a three digit code, and press Enter. Press Esc to put back the previous value. Reset returns that row to the finish.

Layout

The top group in Appearance holds the choices that shape the window: where the tabs live, which side the sidebar is on, and the window view.

Tabs

Choose Along the top (default), In a sidebar or Sidebar + address. The change applies at once. Sidebar + address puts your tabs and the address bar in the sidebar in one step, so no toolbar is left above the page. The same choice is also the top row of Settings › Tabs and the Tabs row of the Acira menu. See Sidebar.

Once tabs are in a sidebar, a Sidebar side row appears under the cards. Choose Left (default) or Right.

Window view

Choose how much of the window shows. This is the default for every window. A window can override it, for example with Ctrl+Shift+F.

With Sidebar + address only Full and Seamless are offered, because there is no toolbar to make smaller or to hide. If you had chosen Compact or Focus, Full shows as ticked there, and your choice comes back when you pick another layout.

Press the key for the view you are in to return to the default view. You can assign keys to Full and Compact under Keyboard shortcuts. In a Tor tab or window, Ctrl+Shift+L runs New Tor circuit for this site instead of Seamless, unless you give that command its own key. The full description of each view is on Window views.

Edge switches

With Sidebar + address, Seamless shows neither of its two edge switches. The edge in the name follows the sidebar's side: with the sidebar on the right, the switches read right edge.

The last switch has its own value for each view. Rest the pointer at the sidebar's edge to see a closed sidebar when it is on.

Interface size

Settings › Appearance › Interface › Interface size sets the size of Acira's tabs, toolbar, sidebar and menus. The choices are 80%, 90%, 100%, 110%, 125% and 150%. The default is 100%. It does not change how large web pages are. For that, use page zoom. See Reader mode, find, zoom and print.

Animation speed

Settings › Appearance › Interface › Animation speed has three choices.

None is the same switch as Reduce motion under Settings › Accessibility. Choosing either one changes the other.

Accessibility switches

Settings › Accessibility has two switches, both off by default.

• Reduce motion simplifies transitions and uses a quiet loading indicator.
• Reduce transparency uses readable, opaque surfaces. If your system already requires opaque surfaces, Settings says so and keeps your own choice saved separately.

There is also a link to Animation speed on that page. See Languages and accessibility.

The Appearance panel

The panel from the toolbar menu or the toolbar button holds the controls people change most.

• The Light, Dark and Auto choice.
• The Finish swatches.
• Workspace cover, the picture behind a new tab. See New tab page.
• Window opacity.
• Compact automatically, Reduced transparency and Reduced motion switches. Compact automatically is the Compact window view.
• Open settings opens Settings.

Other groups on this page

• New tab background: the picture, its style and collection. See New tab page.
• Toolbar and Menu: show, hide and reorder buttons and menu rows. See Toolbar and menu.
• Page zoom: change the size of one open website. See Reader mode, find, zoom and print.

Reset appearance

A Reset appearance row appears at the bottom of the page when something differs from the defaults. Its Reset button restores the Porcelain finish, interface size 100%, Reduce motion off, animation speed Premium, Reduce transparency off, window opacity 64% and clears the four custom colors. It also sets Site color back to Soft. It leaves your Light, Dark or Auto choice, tab layout and window view as they are.

Limits

• A finish and custom colors change Acira's own window and pages. They do not change websites. A website's own dark mode follows your Light, Dark or Auto choice.
• The finish, colors, layout and interface size are shared by all profiles.
• There is no font picker. Interface size scales everything together.

Last updated November 8, 2026