This package provides utilities for displaying elements of the mode line as tabs and ribbons. It also provides replacements for a few built-in elements.

The biggest differences to similar packages is that this one is much simpler and much more consistent. When using this package, only the color of the mode line changes when a window becomes in-/active. Other packages additionally change what elements are being displayed and also the appearance of an individual element may change completely, which I found highly distracting when trying out those packages, because I never knew what visual clues to look for in order to find a certain piece of information.

To style the buffer identification, displayed in the mode line, as shown in the above screenshot, add the following to your init file.

(require 'moody)
(moody-replace-mode-line-front-space)
(moody-replace-mode-line-buffer-identification)
(moody-replace-vc-mode)

Or if you are using use-package.

(use-package moody
  :config
  (moody-replace-mode-line-front-space)
  (moody-replace-mode-line-buffer-identification)
  (moody-replace-vc-mode))

Moody provides functions named moody-replace-..., each of which replaces a particular element with a styled variant. These functions can also be called interactively, in which case they toggle between using the styled and vanilla variants of their respective element.

To learn what element substitutions are available out of the box, use M-x moody-replace- TAB.

Depending on the used theme, the faces mode-line, mode-line-active and mode-line-inactive might have to be modified when using Moody.

Let’s go through some changes that are commonly required. We will be using set-face-attribute to achieve this. The calls to that function should be placed right after load-theme.

These examples assume Emacs 29.1 or later. If you use an older release, modify mode-line instead of mode-line-active.

Many themes (including the default theme) set the :box attribute for these faces. That conflicts with Moody, so you most likely have to remove those boxes.

(set-face-attribute 'mode-line-active nil :box 'unspecified)
(set-face-attribute 'mode-line-inactive nil :box 'unspecified)

A look similar to boxes can be achieved by using the :overline and :underline attributes.

(set-face-attribute 'mode-line-active nil :overline "blue")
(set-face-attribute 'mode-line-active nil
                    :underline `(:color "blue" :position t))

(set-face-attribute 'mode-line-inactive nil :overline "green")
(set-face-attribute 'mode-line-inactive nil
                    :underline `(:color "green" :position t))

Beginning with Emacs 29.1, we can use :position t to put the underline at the very bottom of the mode line. When using an older release, then this unfortunately can only be enabled globally.

(setq x-underline-at-descent-line t)