# Settings for themes In settings for BRAT, you can delete any registered beta themes. # Boring details about themes that are useful to know ## Versioning One goal of BRAT is to make installing and updating themes you want to test very easy. BRAT looks at the commit date on the themes.css file in the Github repository. If the commit date is newer than the date of the locally installed file, it will download the updated and replace the local copy. While this works well, it's not guaranteed to work. ## How BRAT saves theme files to the vault BRAT downloads the theme.css and manifest.json files from the Github repository and saves them to your themes folder in the vault. ## theme.css or theme-beta.css A theme file is downloaded and installed in your vault with the name theme.css. BRAT will look at a repository for the file named theme.css, just as Obsidian does when downloading themes. However, BRAT first looks for a file called **theme-beta.css**. If theme-beta.css exists, it is downloaded and installed as a theme. What does this mean? A theme developer has two options when using BRAT. + Option 1 - in the repo, have a file called theme.css, and BRAT will download that for beta testing. + Option 2 - in the repo, have a file called theme-beta.css, and BRAT will download that for beta testing. In this case, if there is also a file called theme.css, BRAT will ignore that file and instead use the theme-beta.css file. This allows the theme developer to have a shipping theme.css file for the general public and, simultaneously, a theme being tested. When the testing ends, the theme developer removes the theme-beta.css file and updates theme.css with all the changes ready for the general public. Please note if theme-beta.css exists, theme.css is ignored. A theme developer has to manage this scenario so that beta testers are not left with an out-of-date theme-beta.css file. Remember that updates to themes on GitHub can take a few minutes until they are visible to the user due to caching. So, it is a good idea to have your user wait a few minutes before updating after you make changes; otherwise, BRAT can become confused. See next thought for what to do in that case. Additionally, sometimes BRAT will get confused about the most current version of the theme file, so in that case, have your beta tester unregister the theme from BRAT and delete the file on the disk. BRAT does not look at the manifest.json file for themes but instead uses the checksum of the theme to see if something changed. So, if you want to update the theme being tested, you need to change the file, either theme-beta.css or theme.css, depending on the strategy for testing you are using in your repo. ## Deleting beta themes When a theme is deleted from the list of beta themes in the BRAT Settings form, the theme.css and manifest.json are not deleted from the vault. The user can delete the theme from Settings > Appearance. BRAT will no longer monitor updates to the theme.