I made a compact theme for Zulip

Around three months ago, Kagi moved its internal chats from Discord to Zulip. First impressions:

• Encouraging all discussions to be in threads from the start works wonders for organization. (At least for work chats - I wonder what it would do to servers where you're just hanging out?)
• I didn't realize how much I'd gotten used to tuning out ads for premium features and cosmetic items until we switched to a platform that didn't have them.
• I miss voice channels.
• I miss compact mode.

Moving between chat servers was a drawn-out process. Part of it coincided with a week that my team got together in person in Toronto. Late one night in a hotel lobby, as the others worked on something actually useful, it occurred to me that I was a web dev and the Zulip UI was made of web. A few hours later I had the first prototype of a compact/minimal Zulip theme.

I've been using this stylesheet daily since I wrote it, and I believe at least one other Kagian has as well, so I'm pretty confident that we've ironed out most of the corner cases. That means it's time to share.

For the Zulip desktop app: download zulip-compact.desktop.css and go to Desktop Settings > General > Advanced > Add custom CSS.

For Zulip on the web: install Stylus, then open zulip-compact.user.css (or use the mirror on userstyles.world).

2025-07-09

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