Unify v1.10.x introduced a new system to control the appearance of Unify's layers, which allows you to specify the colors of layers individually, and also to define both the standard and customize layer colors in various ways.

Unify 1.10.x introduced the ability to choose your own colors for layers, using a system of color palettes.

Clicking the ops button (concentric-circles icon) at the top-right corner of any layer opens the layer-operations menu, which now features a “layer colors” sub-menu at the very bottom. Right-clicking the layer ops button lets you open only the layer colors menu.

Changing a layer's color is as simple as selecting from the colors menu. The top color on the menu will always be the standard color for that type of layer, i.e., brown for MIDI layers, green for INST layers, blue for AUX, purple for Master. (You can change these “standard” colors if you want; see below.)

Layer colors are saved in patches and layer presets. Older patches/presets which don't include color information will open with standard colors.

Users with limited vision may also force ALL patches and layer-presets to open with standard colors by checking the new ignore layer colors in patches/presets checkbox in Settings.

The default layer-colors menu in Unify 1.10.x features the standard color (based on the type of layer), ten alternate colors, and six shades of grey. If you would like different colors, you can create your own color palette files. Note this is a an advanced technique, and you must be comfortable with editing plain-text files on your system, AND with hexadecimal color representations.

Color palette files live in a folder called Color Palettes, inside Unify's main Presets folder. If you don't have such a folder on your system, you will need to create it.

When Unify starts up, if the Color Palettes folder contains a file called AllColors.txt, it will load it to define all of the custom colors (all except the first one) on the colors menu for all four layer types.

This AllColors.txt file will reproduce the default color scheme:

AllColors.txt

# Custom colors for all layers
 
Colour 01    #ff5D5A0D
Colour 02    #ff713913
Colour 03    #ff432821
Colour 04    #ff704640
Colour 05    #ff791C22
Colour 06    #ff801F47
Colour 07    #ff5E166A
Colour 08    #ff2C044E
Colour 09    #ff165480
Colour 10    #ff08376F
Colour 11    #ff0D1D4F
Colour 12    #ff054718
Greyscale 01 #ff6F6F75
Greyscale 02 #ff4D4D4F
Greyscale 03 #ff404041
Greyscale 04 #ff303032
Greyscale 05 #ff242425
Greyscale 06 #ff171717

As you can see, this is a plain-text file, so must only be edited using a true text editor such as Notepad or Notepad++ on Windows, or TextEdit set to plain-text mode on Mac.

Blank lines, or any “comment” line beginning with a “#” character, are ignored. Active lines consist of a hexadecimal color string preceded by a “#” character, and an arbitrary color name before that. The color name is the text which will appear in the color-menu entry for that color.

A simple web-search for e.g. “hexadecimal color picker” will find online tools such as https://htmlcolorcodes.com/color-picker/, which allow you to create hexadecimal color strings easily. Adobe has a more powerful online color tool at https://color.adobe.com/Find-Hex-Codes-color-theme-7154985/.

Remember that Unify only reads color-palette files on start-up, so you will have to quit and re-start Unify to see the effect of any palette-file changes. We recommend using only the stand-alone Unify app for color-scheme development–in a DAW you would need to ensure that all instances of Unify are removed.

Unify actually uses four separate color palettes internally, one for each layer type (MIDI, INST, AUX, and Master). The AllColors.txt file (if present) will set up all four the same.

If you would like distinct palettes for each layer type, you can also create palette files MidiColors.txt, InstColors.txt, AuxColors.txt, and MasterColors.txt (you don't have to create all four), to overwrite the working palettes for MIDI, INST, AUX, and Master layer types individually. The palette-file format is the same; here is an example:

AuxColors.txt

# My custom AUX palette
 
May the Fourth be With You #ff806340
Luke I am your Father #ff7a8040
Random color #ff578040
Fourscore and Seven Years #ff40804c
Seven Year Itch #ff40806f
Seven Years in Tibet #ff406f80

These custom layer-color palettes can contain any number of entries. If you create only some of the four, the others will be set according to the AllColors.txt file (or the standard sixteen color/greyscale colors if that file is not present).

The color-palette files discussed so far will only set up the custom colors for the four layer types; the first item on each layer-colors menu will still be the “standard” color for that type of layer.

If you wish, you can define your own set of “standard” colors, by creating a LayerColors.txt palette file with exactly four entries. The following example reproduces the standard colors (with new names):

LayerColors.txt

# My custom LayerColors palette
 
My MIDI #ff6F6F75
My INST #ff4D4D4F
My AUX  #ff404041
My Master ff303032

Your palettes will look best if you choose darker colors with different hues but similar saturation. Unify needs to create multiple brightness variations of the colors you define, to distinguish the different graphical elements in each displayed layer, and it will need to use white, red, or green text for plug-in names (to indicate normal loading, load failure, or bridged loading on an Apple Silicon Mac), none of which will show up well against colors that are too bright.