Styling your docs

How to style and theme your documentation.


MkDocs includes a couple built-in themes as well as various third party themes, all of which can easily be customized with extra CSS or JavaScript or overridden from the theme directory. You can also create your own custom theme from the grown up for your documentation.

To use a theme that is included in MkDocs, simply add this to your mkdocs.yml config file.

theme: readthedocs

Replace readthedocs with any of the built-in themes listed below.

To create a new custom theme see the Custom Themes page, or to more heavily customize an existing theme, see the Customizing a Theme section below.

Built-in themes

mkdocs

mkdocs

readthedocs

ReadTheDocs

Third Party Themes

A list of third party themes can be found in the MkDocs community wiki. If you have created your own, please feel free to add it to the list.

Customizing a Theme

If you would like to make a few tweaks to an existing theme, there is no need to create your own theme from scratch. For minor tweaks which only require some CSS and/or JavaScript, you can use the docs_dir. However, for more complex customizations, including overriding templates, you will need to use the theme_dir.

Using the docs_dir

The extra_css and extra_javascript configuration options can be used to make tweaks and customizations to existing themes. To use these, you simply need to include either CSS or JavaScript files within your documentation directory.

For example, to change the colour of the headers in your documentation, create a file called extra.css and place it next to the documentation Markdown. In that file add the following CSS.

h1 {
  color: red;
}

Note

If you are deploying your documentation with ReadTheDocs. You will need to explicitly list the CSS and JavaScript files you want to include in your config. To do this, add the following to your mkdocs.yml.

extra_css: [extra.css]

After making these changes, they should be visible when you run mkdocs serve - if you already had this running, you should see that the CSS changes were automatically picked up and the documentation will be updated.

Note

Any extra CSS or JavaScript files will be added to the generated HTML document after the page content. If you desire to include a JavaScript library, you may have better sucess including the library by using the theme_dir.

Using the theme_dir

The theme_dir configuration option can be used to point to a directory of files which override the files in the theme set on the theme configuration option. Any file in the theme_dir with the same name as a file in the theme will replace the file of the same name in the theme. Any additional files in the theme_dir will be added to the theme. The contents of the theme_dir should mirror the directory structure of the theme. You may include templates, JavaScript files, CSS files, images, fonts, or any other media included in a theme.

Note

For this to work, the theme setting must be set to a known installed theme. If the theme settign is instead set to null, then there is no theme to override and the contents of the theme_dir must be a complete, standalone theme. See Custom Themes for more information.

For example, the mkdocs theme (browse source), contains the following directory structure (in part):

- css\
- fonts\
- img\
  - favicon.ico
  - grid.png
- js\
- 404.html
- base.html
- content.html
- nav-sub.html
- nav.html
- toc.html

To override any of the files contained in that theme, create a new directory next to your docs_dir:

mkdir custom_theme

And then point your mkdocs.yml configuration file at the new directory:

theme_dir: custom_theme

To override the 404 error page ("file not found"), add a new template file named 404.html to the custom_theme directory. For information on what can be included in a template, review the documentation for building a custom theme.

To override the favicon, you can add a new icon file at custom_theme/img/favicon.ico.

To include a JavaScript library, copy the library to the custom_theme/js/ directory.

Your directory structure should now look like this:

- docs/
  - index.html
- custom_theme/
  - img/
    - favicon.ico
  - js/
    - somelib.js
  - 404.html
- config.yml

Note

Any files included in the theme but not included in the theme_dir will still be utilized. The theme_dir will only override/replace files in the theme. If you want to remove files, or build a theme from scratch, then you should review the documentation for building a custom theme.

Overriding Template Blocks

The built-in themes implement many of their parts inside template blocks which can be individually overridden in the main.html template. Simply create a main.html template file in your theme_dir and define replacement blocks within that file. Just make sure that the main.html extends base.html. For example, to alter the title of the MkDocs theme, your replacement main.html template would contain the following:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block title %}
<title>Custom title goes here</title>
{% endblock %}

In the above example, the title block defined in your custom main.html file will be used in place of the default title block defined in the parent theme. You may re-define as many blocks as you desire, as long as those blocks are defined in the parent. For example, you could replace the Google Analytics script with one for a different service or replace the search feature with your own. You will need to consult the parent theme you are using to determine what blocks are available to override. The MkDocs and ReadTheDocs themes provide the following blocks:

  • site_meta: Contains meta tags in the document head.
  • htmltitle: Contains the page title in the document head.
  • styles: Contains the link tags for stylesheets.
  • scripts: Contains the JavaScript libraries included in the page.
  • analytics: Contains the analytics script.
  • extrahead: An empty block in the <head> to insert custom tags/scripts/etc.
  • site_name: Contains the site name in the navigation bar.
  • site_nav: Contains the site navigation in the navigation bar.
  • search_box: Contains the search box in the navigation bar.
  • next_prev: Contains the next and previous buttons in the navigation bar.
  • repo: Contains the repository link in the navigation bar.
  • content: Contains the page content and table of contents for the page.
  • footer: Contains the page footer.

You may need to view the source template files to ensure your modifications will work with the structure of the site. See Template Variables for a list of variables you can use within your custom blocks. For a more complete explaination of blocks, consult the Jinja documentation.