---
id: ST-8
title: Making your own theme
group: Your site
summary: Making a theme from a few colors in Settings, Themes, importing one as JSON, and putting it on your site
keywords: [own theme, new theme, custom colors, import theme, paste a theme, copy as json, dark version, derived, delete theme, my themes]
---

You can make your own theme from a few colors. The rest are worked out for you, with enough contrast to read.

## Where themes are made

Open **Settings** at the foot of the list (the sidebar on the iPad and Mac; **⌘,** with a keyboard), the **Themes** tab, and turn off **Wear the showcase's theme**. The list of themes appears: **My Themes**, **Make One**, and the ready-made ones. Tap or click a theme to put it on the app on this device; the site is not changed.

## A new theme

**New Theme…** starts as a copy of the theme you are wearing, never a blank form. In its editor:

- **Name** it.
- **Appearances**: **Light and dark**, **Light only** or **Dark only**. With both, **Edit Light** and **Edit Dark** pick which side the colors below change. A theme with one side gives the site no light and dark switch.
- Each color is **Derived** (worked out from the ones you set) or **Set** by you. **Reset All to Derived** hands a group back.
- The preview shows each change at once.

**Save** keeps it under **My Themes**; **Cancel** puts it all back.

## Putting it on your site

Every theme made here is listed in **Site → Layout**'s **Theme** menu, beside the ready-made ones. Pick it there and publish the tab: the site gets its own copy of the theme. If you change the theme here later, Layout offers **Use the Changes Made in Settings**; publish the tab to put them on the site. See Themes (ST-7).

## Import and Copy as JSON

**Import Theme** reads a theme somebody sent you: paste its JSON and tap **Import**. It is added under My Themes and put on. The copy button beside a theme copies it as JSON, to paste into another app or send to someone. Importing always makes a new theme; it never overwrites one of yours.

## Editing and deleting

Beside each of your themes, the pencil edits it and the duplicate button starts a new theme from it. **Delete** is in the theme's editor, and asks *Really delete?* first.

## Where your themes are kept

Your themes are kept on this device, with the theme the app wears and your Text settings, through quitting and opening the app, for every showcase on it: make one once and any of your showcases can wear it. A showcase carries a copy of the theme its site wears, so its site is complete on its own, and opening that showcase on another device adds the theme to that device's list. Deleting a theme here never changes a site already wearing it.