Guide
How an orbit looks
Choosing a surface, deciding who picks the time of day, your accent colour, and previewing before you publish.
Choosing a theme
An orbit's theme is not a colour scheme laid over a fixed design. Each one is its own page: its own typography, its own composition, and in several cases its own drawn scene behind your links.
The picker groups them by what kind of thing they are, so you can narrow before you browse.
| Group | What you will find |
|---|---|
| Minimal | Quiet, typographic surfaces that stay out of the way |
| Dynamic | Themes with motion or depth |
| Landscape | A place, drawn — your links sit inside a scene |
| Device | The look of a phone or desktop interface |
Every theme shows you a picture of itself in the picker, so the choice is made by looking rather than by reading a name. Some need a paid plan; those are marked, and choosing one you cannot use will not silently save.
Which plan unlocks whatWho decides the hour
Some themes change with time — a landscape at dawn, at midday, at dusk, at night — and a few change with the season instead. For those, there is a second decision to make, and it is not which hour you like.
| Mode | What a visitor sees |
|---|---|
| Follow the visitor | Their own hour, or their own month. Someone opening your orbit at midnight in Tokyo sees night; someone at noon in Lisbon sees day. |
| Follow their device | Whatever their device is set to — the light one for light mode, the dark one for dark. |
| Fix one | The one you chose, for everybody, whenever they arrive. |
Accent, font and background
Beyond the theme there are three smaller settings: an accent colour, a font, and a background preset.
The accent colour is offered only on themes that actually use one. A drawn landscape has a palette of its own that your colour has no place in, so on those themes the setting is not shown rather than being shown and quietly ignored.
Previewing
The editor shows your orbit as it will actually be, with your own links in it, beside the settings you are changing.
For a theme that follows the visitor, the preview also lets you step through the hours or the seasons by hand. That is a way of looking, not a setting — stepping to night to see how it reads does not pin your orbit to night.
Back to orbit