# Why is custom CSS an important feature for you?

**URL:** <https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/why-is-custom-css-an-important-feature-for-you/14647>\
**Category:** Lounge\
**Created:** [6 February 2021 04:06 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/why-is-custom-css-an-important-feature-for-you/14647 "2021-02-06T04:06:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![uxamanda](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/uxamanda/32/6786_2.png) [@uxamanda](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/uxamanda)\
**Post date:** [8 February 2021 21:03 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/why-is-custom-css-an-important-feature-for-you/14647/15 "2021-02-08T21:03:37Z")

</div>

> [@Enable userchrome.css for plugin webviews](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/enable-userchrome-css-for-plugin-webviews/14606/11):
>
> I don't use custom CSS actually, and I'm curious why is it an important feature? Is it because the available themes are not good enough? If so, wouldn't the solution be to create more themes? Then theme variables could be made available to plugins, thus making them automatically match the current theme. I feel that's a more elegant solution that would be available to everybody, even those who don't know CSS, but maybe I'm missing something.

_was commenting on this [Enable userchrome.css for plugin webviews - #11 by laurent](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/enable-userchrome-css-for-plugin-webviews/14606/11) thread, but realized the convo moved here_

I am realizing that you might have gone further with theme development than I realize. I think your idea of having the plugin developers deeply integrate into the theme is ideal.

There are a few pieces of a great theme, in my opinion:

- Fonts
- Colors
- Icons
- Layout
- Spacing

It seems like fonts/colors might now have deeper integration with variables, I will check it out. The layout part is handled well from the **Change Application Layout** menu. I still would like the ability to adjust spacing (compact mode / whitespace mode), but not as big of a deal. Would **love** to have custom icons, but I feel like that is a stretch since the app uses a icon font.

For me, the main use for custom CSS is to override the base theme decisions – specific requests I've seen asked about recently are making font sizes different in note panel vs Markdown panel, changing the size / color of scrollbar, changing how the TOC is displayed (hide until hovered).

As someone who is much more familiar with HTML / CSS than building the app / modifying the code, I have really enjoyed the ability to "hack" Joplin with CSS. It makes the app extremely flexible in a way that no other app I've used ever has. To make this flow better, having an ID on each module in the app and applying state with CSS classes would be really great. I realize this is easier said than done. 🙂

tl;dr: Improving theming is awesome! Having the ability to customize CSS is whatever way someone can dream up – that's a super power.

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/why-is-custom-css-an-important-feature-for-you/14647)._