How to switch between Light, Grey, and Dark themes

Click the Sun, Monitor, or Moon button in the top toolbar to switch themes. Your choice is remembered per browser.

~3 min read All users

Overture ships with three color themes you can switch between at any time: Light, Grey, and Dark. Pick whichever your eyes prefer, or whichever matches the room you're working in. Your choice is remembered per browser, so the next time you sign in on the same device you'll come back to the same theme without having to set it again.

The Overture event dashboard in Light theme — cream paper background with dark forest type, showing the SpaceCon 2027 event with sessions and stage leaders. — **Light theme** — cream paper canvas, dark forest type. The "office daylight" look and the default for new accounts.

The same Overture event dashboard in Grey theme — slightly cooler, neutral-grey canvas tint with the same dark type. — **Grey theme** — a cooler, neutral-grey canvas. Middle ground between Light and Dark for stage-side laptops where pure white feels too hot but pure dark is too dim.

The same Overture event dashboard in Dark theme — near-black background with parchment-cream type, amber row highlights, and the green time bar. — **Dark theme** — near-black backgrounds, parchment-cream type. Designed for backstage / FOH where ambient light is low and a bright screen would blind the operator.

Where the theme switcher lives

The switcher is a small three-button cluster in the top toolbar, just to the right of the organization name chip. The three buttons are:

Sun icon — Light theme. Cream paper background, dark forest type. The "office daylight" look. This is the default.
Monitor icon — Grey theme. Cooler, neutral-grey surfaces with the same dark type. A middle option for stage-side laptops where pure white feels too hot but pure dark is too dim.
Moon icon — Dark theme. Near-black backgrounds, parchment-cream type. Designed for backstage / FOH where ambient light is low and a bright laptop screen would blind the operator.

The active theme's button is highlighted with a subtle pressed background so you can see which one's on at a glance.

How to switch

Sign in to Overture.
Click the Sun, Monitor, or Moon button in the top toolbar.
The entire app re-skins instantly — no reload required.

Where your preference is saved

Theme is stored in your browser's local storage. That has a few practical implications:

Per browser, per device. If you use Overture on your laptop in Chrome and your phone in Safari, each one remembers its own theme separately. Set them independently to match each environment.
Per browser profile. If you use multiple Chrome profiles or a guest window, each profile has its own setting.
Not synced across team members. Your theme is yours alone — your producer can be in Dark mode while you're in Light, even if you're looking at the same event together.
Cleared by "clear site data." If you wipe browser data for overture.show, the theme resets to the Light default. Just pick again.

Tips by use case

Office prep work — Light. Best contrast for long stretches of typing, drag-to-reorder, and copy-paste from Excel.
Rehearsal / runthrough at the venue — Grey. Less glare than Light when the house lights are partially down, but you can still see everything clearly.
Live show at FOH or backstage — Dark. The cue list won't light up your face on a video call, and BigClock on the stage monitor doesn't blow out neighboring screens. Your stage caller will thank you.
Demo-ing the app to a client — Light. It photographs best for over-the-shoulder explanations and looks "default-friendly" to someone new.

Theme vs. BigClock

Worth noting: BigClock mode always uses its own dramatic near-black background with the giant green countdown, regardless of which theme you've chosen for the rest of the app. That's intentional — BigClock is for the stage display, and it has a fixed look that works on every projector. Your app theme controls everything outside of BigClock.

What if the buttons aren't doing anything?

Two rare reasons the switcher might appear stuck:

Local storage disabled. If your browser is in a private mode that blocks site storage entirely, themes will switch for the session but won't persist after a reload. Switch out of private mode for normal persistence.
Hard-cached old CSS. Very rarely after a big release, an old stylesheet sticks in cache. A hard reload (Cmd+Shift+R on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows) fixes it.