What am I doing wrong with themes?

[jonathanthomas83]

Hi I'm new so excuse me...being new! :-)

I’ve run into a persistent issue on macOS when trying to apply a custom JSON style (specifically Tokyo Night) via either the GLOW_STYLE environment variable or the style: field in ~/.config/glow/glow.yml.

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🧪 What I tried

✅ Confirmed the style file exists:

ls -l ~/.config/glow/styles/tokyo-night.json

✅ Clean config:

style: ~/.config/glow/styles/tokyo-night.json
mouse: true
pager: true
width: 80

and

style: /Users/myname/.config/glow/styles/tokyo-night.json"
mouse: true
pager: true
width: 80

✅ Set absolute path (not using ~)

export GLOW_STYLE="$HOME/.config/glow/styles/tokyo_night.json"
# also tried
export GLOW_STYLE="/Users/myname/.config/glow/styles/tokyo_night.json"

✅ Verified that echo $GLOW_STYLE returns the correct absolute path.

✅ Ran glow like this:

glow

and

glow README.md

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🔍 The Problem

• glow launches and enters TUI mode
• I can browse and select a file
• But then it just hangs at "loading document"
• If I change the style back to "auto" in the config, everything works again

EDIT: I also just noticed that v2 introduced glow -s "tokyo-night" but that doesn't work for me either.

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💡 Summary

• JSON styles appear to be supported according to the README (style: field can be a path), but don’t function reliably on macOS — even when set via $GLOW_STYLE
• No feedback or error — just a silent hang at “loading document”

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🙏 Question

Is support for custom JSON styles in glow TUI mode currently functional on macOS (15.4.1)? Or is this a known limitation/bug?

Happy to help test a fix or raise a formal issue if that’s preferred.

Thanks for your work on this awesome tool — really loving it otherwise!