Customization¶

A great starting point¶

Project documentation is as diverse as the projects themselves and Material for MkDocs is a good starting point for making it look great. However, as you write your documentation, you may reach a point where some small adjustments are necessary to preserve your brand's style.

Adding assets¶

MkDocs provides several ways to interfere with themes. In order to make a few tweaks to an existing theme, you can just add your stylesheets and JavaScript files to the docs directory.

Additional stylesheets¶

If you want to tweak some colors or change the spacing of certain elements, you can do this in a separate stylesheet. The easiest way is by creating a new stylesheet file in your docs directory:

mkdir docs/stylesheets
touch docs/stylesheets/extra.css

Then, add the following line to your mkdocs.yml:

extra_css:
  - stylesheets/extra.css

Spin up the development server with mkdocs serve and start typing your changes in your additional stylesheet file – you can see them instantly after saving, as the MkDocs development server supports live reloading.

Additional JavaScript¶

The same is true for additional JavaScript. If you want to integrate another syntax highlighter or add some custom logic to your theme, create a new JavaScript file in your docs directory:

mkdir docs/javascripts
touch docs/javascripts/extra.js

Then, add the following line to your mkdocs.yml:

extra_javascript:
  - javascripts/extra.js

Further assistance can be found in the MkDocs documentation.

Extending the theme¶

If you want to alter the HTML source (e.g. add or remove some part), you can extend the theme. MkDocs supports theme extension, an easy way to override parts of a theme without forking and changing the main theme.

Setup and theme structure¶

Reference the Material theme as usual in your mkdocs.yml, and create a new folder for overrides which you reference using custom_dir:

theme:
  name: material
  custom_dir: overrides

The structure in the overrides directory must mirror the directory structure of the original theme, as any file in the overrides directory will replace the file with the same name which is part of the original theme. Besides, further assets may also be put in the overrides directory.

The directory layout of the theme is as follows:

.
├─ assets/
│  ├─ images/                          # Images and icons
│  ├─ javascripts/                     # JavaScript
│  └─ stylesheets/                     # Stylesheets
├─ partials/
│  ├─ integrations/                    # 3rd-party integrations
│  ├─ language/                        # Localized languages
│  ├─ footer.html                      # Footer bar
│  ├─ header.html                      # Header bar
│  ├─ hero.html                        # Hero teaser
│  ├─ language.html                    # Localized labels
│  ├─ nav-item.html                    # Main navigation item
│  ├─ nav.html                         # Main navigation
│  ├─ search.html                      # Search box
│  ├─ social.html                      # Social links
│  ├─ source-date.html                 # Last updated date
│  ├─ source-link.html                 # Link to source file
│  ├─ source.html                      # Repository information
│  ├─ tabs-item.html                   # Tabs navigation item
│  ├─ tabs.html                        # Tabs navigation
│  ├─ toc-item.html                    # Table of contents item
│  └─ toc.html                         # Table of contents
├─ 404.html                            # 404 error page
├─ base.html                           # Base template
└─ main.html                           # Default page

Overriding partials¶

In order to override the footer, we can replace the footer.html partial with our own partial. To do this, create the file partials/footer.html in the overrides directory. MkDocs will now use the new partial when rendering the theme. This can be done with any file.

Overriding template blocks¶

Besides overriding partials, one can also override so called template blocks, which are defined inside the templates and wrap specific features. To override a template block, create a main.html inside the overrides directory and define the block, e.g.:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block htmltitle %}
  <title>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</title>
{% endblock %}

Material for MkDocs provides the following template blocks:

For more on this topic refer to the MkDocs documentation

Theme development¶

Material for MkDocs uses Webpack as a build tool to leverage modern web technologies like TypeScript and SASS. If you want to make more fundamental changes, it may be necessary to make the adjustments directly in the source of the theme and recompile it. This is fairly easy.

Environment setup¶

In order to start development on Material for MkDocs, a Node.js version of at least 12 is required. First, clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material

Next, all dependencies need to be installed, which is done with:

cd mkdocs-material
pip install -r requirements.txt
npm install

Development mode¶

Start the Webpack watchdog with:

npm start

Then, in a second session, start the MkDocs server with:

mkdocs serve

Point your browser to localhost:8000 and you should see this documentation in front of you.

Build process¶

When you've finished making your changes, you can build the theme by invoking:

npm run build

This triggers the production-level compilation and minification of all stylesheets and JavaScript sources. When the command exits, the final files are located in the material directory. Add the theme_dir variable pointing to the aforementioned directory in your original mkdocs.yml.

Now you can run mkdocs build and you should see your documentation with your changes to the original theme.