This is a quick post showing how to apply a cobalt-like theme to Matlab’s workspace and editor. Matlab has rather limited font and colour customization options compared to XCode (see my other post about the Cobalt theme) but it is still possible to change the default theme to something that I personally find a little easier on the eyes.

The default Matlab theme (when viewed on a Mac) is shown below …

The end result is this …

If you like the look of this, make a file called matlab.prf containing the text at the end of this post. Navigate to the folder containing the original matlab.prf, make a backup of the original file and replace it with the new version. In *nix systems, this file is located in …

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$HOME/.matlab/<version>/matlab.prf. 	

Below is the config text …

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#MATLAB Preferences
#Wed Jan 23 15:55:28 GMT 2013
Color_CmdWinWarnings=C-39936
Color_CmdWinErrors=C-1703936
Colors_M_UnterminatedStrings=C-5111808
Colors_M_SystemCommands=C-16022329
ColorsBackground=C-16701878
Colors_M_Warnings=C-27648
ColorsText=C-1
Colors_M_Errors=C-65536
Colors_M_Keywords=C-20124
Colors_HTML_HTMLLinks=C-16711681
Colors_M_Strings=C-16711936
ColorsUseMLintAutoFixBackground=Btrue
Colors_M_Comments=C-16711681
ColorsUseSystem=Bfalse
Desktop.Font.Code=F0 12 Monaco