Changing the colors¶

As any proper Material Design implementation, Material for MkDocs supports Google's original color palette, which can be easily configured through mkdocs.yml. Furthermore, colors can be customized with a few lines of CSS to fit your brand's identity by using CSS variables.

Configuration¶

Color palette¶

Color scheme¶

Source · Default: default

Material for MkDocs supports two color schemes: a light mode, which is just called default, and a dark mode, which is called slate. The color scheme can be set via mkdocs.yml:

theme:
  palette:
    scheme: default

Click on a tile to change the color scheme:

Primary color¶

Source · Default: indigo

The primary color is used for the header, the sidebar, text links and several other components. In order to change the primary color, set the following value in mkdocs.yml to a valid color name:

theme:
  palette:
    primary: indigo

Click on a tile to change the primary color:

Accent color¶

Source · Default: indigo

The accent color is used to denote elements that can be interacted with, e.g. hovered links, buttons and scrollbars. It can be changed in mkdocs.yml by choosing a valid color name:

theme:
  palette:
    accent: indigo

Click on a tile to change the accent color:

Color palette toggle¶

Source · Default: none

It's also possible to offer a list of color palettes to the user, each of which can include a scheme, primary and accent color each. The user can toggle between those color palettes:

theme:
  palette:
    - scheme: default
      toggle:
        icon: material/toggle-switch-off-outline
        name: Switch to dark mode
    - scheme: slate
      toggle:
        icon: material/toggle-switch
        name: Switch to light mode

The following fields must be set for each toggle:

icon

Default: none · Required – This field must point to a valid icon path referencing any icon bundled with the theme, or the build will not succeed. Some popular combinations:

• + – material/toggle-switch-off-outline + material/toggle-switch
• + – material/weather-sunny + material/weather-night
• + – material/eye-outline + material/eye
• + – material/lightbulb-outline + material/lightbulb

name

Default: none · Required – This field is used as the toggle's title attribute and should be set to a discernable name to improve accessibility.

System preference¶

Source · Default: none

In order to automatically set the color palette to the user's system preference, a media query can be set as part of the media field next to the toggle definition in mkdocs.yml:

theme:
  palette:
    - media: "(prefers-color-scheme: light)"
      scheme: default
      toggle:
        icon: material/toggle-switch-off-outline
        name: Switch to dark mode
    - media: "(prefers-color-scheme: dark)"
      scheme: slate
      toggle:
        icon: material/toggle-switch
        name: Switch to light mode

When the user first visits your site, the media queries are evaluated in the order of their definition. The first media query that matches selects the default color palette.

Customization¶

Custom colors¶

Source · Difficulty: easy

Material for MkDocs implements colors using CSS variables (custom properties). If you want to customize the colors beyond the palette (e.g. to use your brand-specific colors), you can add an additional stylesheet and tweak the values of the CSS variables.

Let's say you're YouTube, and want to set the primary color to your brand's palette. Just add:

:root {
  --md-primary-fg-color:        #EE0F0F;
  --md-primary-fg-color--light: #ECB7B7;
  --md-primary-fg-color--dark:  #90030C;
}

See the file containing the color definitions for a list of all CSS variables.

Custom color schemes¶

Source · Difficulty: easy

Besides overriding specific colors, you can create your own, named color scheme by wrapping the definitions in the [data-md-color-scheme="..."] attribute selector, which you can then set via mkdocs.yml as described in the color schemes section:

[data-md-color-scheme="youtube"] {
  --md-primary-fg-color:        #EE0F0F;
  --md-primary-fg-color--light: #ECB7B7;
  --md-primary-fg-color--dark:  #90030C;
}

Additionally, the slate color scheme defines all of it's colors via hsla color functions and deduces its colors from the --md-hue CSS variable. You can tune the slate theme with:

[data-md-color-scheme="slate"] {
  --md-hue: 210; /* [0, 360] */
}