Guides

Theme a dashboard

A dashboard can carry one named look: its chart colors, its fonts, and the canvas around the charts. The look lives inside the dashboard. A theme can hold a light face and a dark face, and then each person who opens the dashboard sees the face for their own mode. This guide shows where the look lives and how to change it.

Your light and dark mode

The account menu at the top right holds a mode switch: Switch to dark mode, or Switch to light mode when you are in dark mode. The switch restyles the app around the canvas, and each dashboard that has no theme of its own. Until you use the switch, the mode follows your computer's setting. The app does not save your choice, so a reload goes back to the computer's setting.

The mode belongs to you alone. A theme with a light face and a dark face shows you the face for your mode. A theme with one face keeps its look in both modes.

Give the dashboard a look

1. Open a dashboard that you can edit.
2. Select Edit in the header.
3. On the right rail, select Dashboard settings (the gear icon).
4. Under Theme, select Edit theme.

5. Pick a look from the Theme list. On a dashboard with no theme, you can also select Customize current look to start from what you see.

The open dashboard is the preview. Theme edits are dashboard edits: they save with the dashboard, and undo reverses them.

The editor groups what a theme covers:

• Colors — the chart palettes: the categorical palette, the sequential and diverging ramps, and the status colors. Each color is a swatch that you select to change.
• Charts — the Font of the text inside charts, the grid lines, and the text colors.
• Dashboard — the canvas and the blocks: canvas background, block background, block borders, corner radius, the block titles with their own Block title font, the Text font inside blocks, Block shadow, and Paper texture.
• Edit as JSON — the whole theme as JSON, for options that the controls do not cover.
• Fonts — at the end of the panel, for a person with the analyst right only. Upload a WOFF2, TTF, or OTF file, and its family joins the font options of every editor on the server.

No one control sets the font everywhere. Font under Charts sets the chart text, Block title font sets the block titles, and Text font sets the other text inside blocks and in articles.

Paper texture draws a paper grain behind the canvas. The grain shows through a block whose background is the same color as the canvas background. A person who turns on Plain background in the account menu, or whose system asks for more contrast, sees the canvas without the grain, and the theme keeps its setting.

Without the analyst right, pick from the built-in fonts and the fonts already uploaded to the server. The analyst right is a right to vouch for work and to curate what everyone on the server reuses. On arkush.app, only the people who run arkush.app hold it. On an org install, the people who run it give the right to named people. The app shows no list of your rights. Without the right, the Fonts group and Save to library do not show.

To change a color, select its swatch. A picker opens with a color square, a hue slider and a transparency slider. A single color, such as Block background, also has a text box beside the swatch. Type an exact color there, such as #1f6feb, and press Enter. The text box takes any CSS color. The colors of a palette or a ramp have swatches only, and the picker of each one has its own text box under the sliders: type an exact color there and press Enter.

Every color accepts transparency. A fully transparent block background, with block borders off, gives the frameless look: charts sit directly on the canvas, with no sheet behind them.

Name the look in the Name field. The built-in themes have a light face and a dark face. Each face has its own colors, fonts and canvas options.

To edit one face:

1. Under Face, select Light or Dark.
2. Change the controls. The canvas shows the face that you edit.

When you close the editor, the canvas shows the face for your mode again. To keep one look for every viewer, select Remove the light face or Remove the dark face.

A theme with one face shows Designed for instead: the mode that its colors are for. Every viewer sees that one look, and your mode switch changes only the app around the canvas. To make the theme follow each viewer, select Add a dark face or Add a light face. The new face keeps the fonts and the block shape, and it starts from the base colors of its mode. When a one-face theme differs from your app mode, the editor shows a note. The note offers the missing face, or the mode switch. For a face of a built-in theme, the note offers the whole built-in theme in light and dark. The app changes your mode only when you tell it to.

When you edit an applied theme, the Theme list reads Custom: the dashboard's own edited copy. If you then pick another theme, the editor asks before it replaces your edits. To remove the theme, pick Default (adaptive). The dashboard then follows the mode of each viewer.

Use a saved theme

The Library section of the editor lists the themes saved on the server, each with its name, its faces, and who saved it. The section needs a signed-in account. Select Apply to use a theme. The dashboard gets its own copy, so a later change in the library does not reach a dashboard that already applied the theme. To get the change, apply the theme again.

Only a person with the analyst right can save into the library. On arkush.app, the library holds the themes that the people who run arkush.app saved. With the right, the editor shows Save to library, and the theme saves under its name. When the library already holds that name, the button becomes Update “…” in library and updates that entry. Without the right, a theme you make stays in your dashboard, and everyone who opens the dashboard sees it.

A new dashboard starts with the default theme. The built-in default is Arkush: charts straight on a paper grain, with no frame around each block, in a light face and a dark face. Lifted puts each block on its own sheet. On an org install, an admin can set another default, from the saved themes or the built-in themes, under Administration → Appearance.

View the dashboard in another look

Viewers see the dashboard as you designed it, because the theme is inside the dashboard. Each person can change their own view of it:

1. At the bottom of the canvas, select the palette icon beside the zoom control.
2. Select a look: As designed, Match my light/dark mode, a built-in theme, or a saved theme.
3. To go back, select As designed.

The header of the menu reads Only for you — not saved. The choice does not change the dashboard, and no one else sees it. It resets when you open another dashboard. While another look is on, a dot marks the palette icon. The menu works in view mode too, and it needs no edit access.

On a dashboard without a theme, and on a theme with a light face and a dark face, the menu has no Match my light/dark mode, because that dashboard already follows your mode. On a one-face copy of a built-in theme, Match my light/dark mode shows the whole built-in theme. When you open the theme editor, your choice clears, and the editor shows the real theme of the dashboard.

Agents and the theme