diff --git a/settings/hyprland.nix b/settings/hyprland.nix
index 54d9f65..c78cc5d 100644
--- a/settings/hyprland.nix
+++ b/settings/hyprland.nix
@@ -548,6 +548,22 @@ in
             hl.bind("XF86AudioPlay", hl.dsp.exec_cmd("playerctl play-pause"), { locked = true })
             hl.bind("XF86AudioNext", hl.dsp.exec_cmd("playerctl next"),        { locked = true })
             hl.bind("XF86AudioPrev", hl.dsp.exec_cmd("playerctl previous"),    { locked = true })
+
+            -- The live theme, last so it beats the build-time colours in
+            -- settings.config above. A rebuild rewrites this file and hyprland
+            -- reloads it, which re-runs the whole config — that is why the
+            -- borders used to snap back to the build-time palette on every
+            -- `update` and stay there until the next wallpaper switch.
+            -- theme-apply's `hyprctl eval` only touches the running instance;
+            -- this is the half that survives a reload. It also means a fresh
+            -- session starts on the last-used theme rather than stylix's.
+            --
+            -- pcall, not a bare call: before the first theme-apply on a new
+            -- account the state symlink does not exist, and hyprland opens
+            -- only selected Lua libraries (luaL_openselectedlibs), so `dofile`
+            -- itself may be absent. Either way this degrades to a no-op
+            -- instead of aborting the rest of the config.
+            pcall(dofile, "${config.xdg.stateHome}/quickshell-theme/hypr.lua")
           '';
       };