Themes and appearance

Pick a theme

Settings path: Home › Themes

Expand the arrow beside Library to search across your themes, Favorites, plugin themes and available packs from the official, Affiliate, Nuphy and added repositories. Search by name, style or repository. In Automatic appearance, results still follow the Light or Dark slot you are editing. The keyboard preview smoothly shrinks while you type in Search and returns to its previous size when you finish. Clear Search to return to the selected collection. In Android test builds, changing themes uses a brief transition. You can tap another theme immediately; the preview follows your latest choice.

1. Open Themes. The keyboard above the list is live, so it shows what you are about to get.
2. Tap a theme to put it on.
3. Tap Customize to change the one you are wearing.

Pick your colours, drop in a background, choose a font. Save the looks you like and swap between them anytime.

Touch and hold a theme, then choose Add to Favorites. Tap › beside Library, then choose Favorites to see your collection, then tap a theme to apply it. To remove a favourite, touch and hold it and choose Remove from Favorites. Your choices stay saved when you reopen Clink; deleting a downloaded or custom theme also removes it from Favorites. Android test builds also support this saved Favorites collection.

Theme thumbnails and exported QR previews keep the theme’s saved key colours, including the Shift key. The live keyboard can show a different Shift colour while Shift or Caps Lock is active if you have set a separate active colour.

Liquid Glass, metal, and 3D keycaps

Clink themes are materials, not just wallpaper. Solid colour, brushed metal, sculpted 3D keycaps, and Liquid Glass on supported iPhones. Both appearances of Berry give the number and symbol switch key (123 / ABC / #+=) raised walls on both sides, matching Delete.

Liquid Glass needs a recent iPhone and a new enough iOS. The other materials work without it. Build your own or start from a preset. In Android test builds, glass popups can refract the keyboard lettering beneath them, and accented glass keys softly blend their colour into the facing edges of neighbouring keys. With Liquid Glass enabled on Switches, the switch assembly remains visible beneath the refracting key face. Glass themes also carry through to the Tools picker and tool-panel cards and controls. In Clipboard, swipe a card to reveal compact action buttons that grow out of the card's glass edge, then separate as you open the row. The appearance and motion are still being tuned against iOS.

• Mechanical keyboard feel on iPhone: sounds and haptics

Make one of your own

1. Tap Create theme for an empty one, or duplicate a theme you already like.
2. Work through the colours, the background, the geometry and the key labels. The preview keeps up as you go.
3. Name it and save. It lands in your library beside the built-in ones.

• Create theme
• Customize
• Duplicate

Nothing is destroyed while you experiment: a built-in theme is always still there to go back to, and a copy leaves the original alone.

Light and dark themes

Turn on Automatic appearance to follow the phone’s Light and Dark modes. You can choose separate themes for each mode, or select a paired theme once to fill both slots. Paired themes appear in both pickers. The side-by-side Light and Dark previews each show their matching variant, so you can compare both appearances without changing the phone’s mode. Tap a preview to choose which slot you are browsing. Native, Capless and Liquid each come as one paired preset: choose one once and its light and dark designs follow the phone’s appearance. Existing selections of the older separate presets keep their saved look.

To create a pair, open Create theme or Customize and turn on Paired theme. Both variants start with the current design. Use Shared for the settings they have in common, then Light or Dark for differences. For example, keep the key material and fill shared, and change Key text and FN key text separately in each appearance. Shared changes continue to apply wherever you have not made a separate edit.

To restore one variant’s shared settings, select Light or Dark, open the theme actions menu and choose Use shared settings. Undo and Redo include changes to the whole pair. Save keeps both variants as one library item; file and QR sharing include both variants and their photos and artwork. Creating a pair uses the same Clink Pro access as creating a custom theme. Android test builds use the same Shared, Light and Dark editing controls and keep both appearances together when saving or sharing.

Turn off Automatic appearance to keep a fixed look. Turning off Paired theme in the editor keeps the appearance you are currently editing as a single theme; Undo can restore the pair during that editing session. Older Clink versions may show only the shared design from a paired theme file, so use a version that supports pairs to edit or share both variants.

Background

Paint the theme’s colour, gradient or photo behind the keys. Off, the app you’re typing in shows through.

In Android test builds, drag Keyboard corners in Background to round the top corners of the whole keyboard; the app you’re typing in shows through them. On iPhone the keyboard keeps its system shape.

Pick an effect (rain, aurora, fireflies) and it drifts behind the keys as you type.

Effects

Settings path: Home › Effects

Backlight your keyboard the way a mechanical one glows: steady, moving, or lighting up under your fingers.

All effects are optional. They run on press or appearance only, so the keyboard stays fast.

Build your own lighting

Settings path: Home › Effects

1. Open Effects, scroll to Your effects and tap New effect.
2. Add layers. Each one is a pattern, such as a wave, a pulse or a twinkle, with its own speed, size, direction and brightness.
3. Say whether each layer moves the brightness, the colour or both, and add a few colours for the effect to travel through.
4. Name it and save. The keyboard switches to it straight away.

Layers apply from the top down. A later layer can add its light to the ones above it, keep whichever is brighter, or work as a mask that dims them. The keyboard at the top of the editor lights up as you change things, and nothing is kept until you save. Leave the colours empty and the effect uses the Color setting instead.

Plugins can offer lighting effects too. They sit under From plugins, and holding one and choosing Duplicate gives you a copy of your own to change.

• Community packs

Font

Set the type on the key faces, or draw your own letters with a finger or Apple Pencil. Font samples use black lettering on white keys so you can compare typefaces with any theme. Fonts you make are never attached to a shared theme. You can share them separately through Community when you have permission to distribute them.

Expand the arrow beside Library to search built-in faces, installed fonts and available fonts across the official and added repositories. Clear Search to browse the selected source again.

To share a font you drew from scratch, touch and hold it in the font picker and choose Export. The export popup offers a QR link, Share to Community and File for a font file. Fonts made by modifying another typeface keep their export restrictions.

Pets and stickers

A little friend that lives on your keyboard. It watches you type and naps when you stop.

Add your own images and GIFs to the keyboard, then drag, pinch, rotate and fade each one into place. In Android test builds, open Stickers and drag a placed sticker directly on the keyboard preview to move it. Tap it to select it; the dashed outline marks the selected sticker. Pinch to resize it, or use Adjust for size, rotation, opacity and whether it sits above or behind the keys. Turn on Grid snapping to align placements.

• Sending a theme, layout or pack to someone