Are you a self-hosting enthusiast looking to inject some personality into your infrastructure? While functionality often takes precedence, the visual appeal of your management interface shouldn’t be overlooked. Discover Proxmorph, an incredible open-source project designed to transform your Proxmox VE and Proxmox Backup Server web UI. Go beyond the default dark and light modes with stunning custom themes, enhancing aesthetics, improving contrast, and making your home lab customization truly unique. Dive in to learn how this simple tweak can significantly elevate your daily server management UI experience.
What is Proxmorph and How Can It Elevate Your Proxmox Experience?
Proxmorph is a vibrant community project that empowers users to apply several custom themes to both Proxmox VE Server (PVE) and Proxmox Backup Server (PBS). For the tech-savvy individual dedicated to self-hosting, Proxmorph offers a nuanced way to personalize their robust virtualization platform. It delivers a wide variety of colors that can elevate the interface to a new level of visual appeal. While Proxmox’s default dark mode was a welcome addition, many users find it pretty basic. Proxmorph steps in to refine these visuals, offering better tones and improved color schemes that integrate seamlessly.
These custom themes for Proxmox VE and Proxmox Backup Server integrate directly with the native color theme selector within the Proxmox web UI. This means you gain access to a host of new options beyond the standard “dark” and “light” modes. Crucially, these themes often boast superior contrast ratios compared to the default options, which can significantly enhance readability and reduce eye strain during extended management sessions.
Take a look at this side-by-side comparison (pic from the Github repo) of the default dark mode compared to the Unifi theme that is included with the Proxmorph theme collection.
Better contrast between the stock look and feel within proxmox web ui
Diverse Theme Collections for Personalized Proxmox VE & PBS
The current release of Proxmorph includes three distinct sets of themes, each offering a unique flavor. What’s particularly appealing about these themes is their subtle yet pleasing nature; they provide a refreshing facelift for the Proxmox web UI without being overly distracting.
A recent trend in home lab customization is the use of consistent visual themes across all management interfaces (e.g., matching your Proxmox theme to your Grafana dashboards). Proxmorph helps you achieve this consistency right from your core hypervisor.
Installing Proxmorph: A Step-by-Step Guide for Your Home Lab
While pushing visual modifications to a critical production Proxmox VE environment might be a calculated risk, Proxmorph is a fantastic playground for home lab customization and non-critical setups. It would be great to see Proxmox integrate more native themes like this in the future, but for now, Proxmorph fills that gap perfectly.
The easiest way to install Proxmorph is by running a simple one-line Bash command:
bash <(curl -fsSL install
This command handles all the necessary steps to get your new themes up and running swiftly.
Installing proxmorph
One crucial step AFTER installation: your browser might not immediately display the new themes as options. To fix this, use the key combination CTRL+SHIFT+R in your browser session. This performs a hard refresh, allowing the new themes to appear.
To access your new themes, navigate to the profile menu for your logged-in user in the upper right-hand corner of the Proxmox browser session and choose “Color Theme.”
Changing your color theme
Under the Color Theme selection, you will see all the newly added themes. If they’re not visible, ensure you’ve performed the hard refresh or are using an incognito browser tab.
Viewing the new themes added by proxmorph
Alternate Manual Install Process
For those who prefer a more hands-on approach, you can also install Proxmorph manually by cloning the GitHub repository and executing the install.sh script:
git clone
cd proxmorph
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh install
Under the Hood: How Proxmorph Seamlessly Integrates Themes
For the technically curious, understanding how Proxmorph alters the visuals in Proxmox VE Server or Proxmox Backup Server is straightforward. The project achieves its magic through these steps:
- The installer copies custom CSS files to the shared
/usr/share/javascript/proxmox-widget-toolkit/themes/directory. - JavaScript patches (specifically for charts) are installed to the product-specific JS directories within Proxmox.
proxmoxlib.jsis patched to register these new themes. Additionally, product index templates (.tplor.hbs) are patched to load the new JS modifications.- An
apt hookis automatically installed, ensuring that the system re-patches itself after product updates (e.g., towidget-toolkit,pve-manager, orproxmox-backup-server), maintaining theme persistence. - Finally, the themes become available within the native “Color Theme” selector for both Proxmox VE and Proxmox Backup Server.
Choosing Your Ideal Theme: Top Proxmorph Picks
Out of the many Proxmorph themes available to customize the Proxmox web UI, the Unifi theme consistently stands out. Its even higher contrast ratio compared to the out-of-the-box “dark” mode is particularly appealing, making graphs and other visuals “pop” with greater clarity.
The unifi theme with proxmorph
Another strong contender is the Github dark theme. This option maintains excellent contrast ratios over the default dark mode while retaining a more stock visual appearance for graphs and charts within the web UI.
Github dark theme
The Dracula Proxmorph theme is also a personal favorite. Drawing inspiration from the widely popular VS Code theme, Dracula introduces distinctive and cool-looking accents to the Proxmox web UI, significantly enhancing the visual impact of management elements. These subtle changes can make a huge difference in day-to-day server management UI tasks and even help reduce eye strain during long sessions.
Wrapping Up
Do projects like Proxmorph make your server faster? No. Do they make your home lab more fun and your management experience more enjoyable? Absolutely! This is the very essence of home lab customization – experimenting with new visuals, tools, and projects that we wouldn’t typically deploy in critical production environments.
Before trying to customize the Proxmox web UI, you might not expect a slight visual tweak to make a significant difference. However, after experiencing it firsthand, the improvement in the management UI experience is undeniable. Even these subtle changes can lead to a huge difference in daily management efficiency and help reduce eye strain during long sessions. The enhanced contrast in many themes, surpassing even the stock dark mode, truly elevates the user experience. Have you tried Proxmorph or manually tweaked your Proxmox interface? Share your thoughts in the comments below!