Getting started¶

Installation¶

Installing MkDocs¶

Before installing MkDocs, you need to make sure you have Python and pip – the Python package manager – up and running. You can verify if you're already good to go with the following commands:

python --version
# Python 3.8.0
pip --version
# pip 19.3.1

Installing and verifying MkDocs is as simple as:

pip install mkdocs && mkdocs --version
# mkdocs, version 1.0.4

Material requires MkDocs >= 1.0.0.

Installing Material¶

using pip¶

Material can be installed with pip:

pip install mkdocs-material

using choco¶

If you're on Windows you can use Chocolatey to install Material:

choco install mkdocs-material

This will install all required dependencies like Python and MkDocs.

cloning from GitHub¶

Material can also be used without a system-wide installation by cloning the repository into a subfolder of your project's root directory:

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

This is especially useful if you want to extend the theme and override some parts of the theme. The theme will reside in the folder mkdocs-material/material.

Troubleshooting¶

Alternative: Using Docker¶

If you're familiar with Docker, the official Docker image for Material comes with all dependencies pre-installed and ready-to-use with the latest version published on PyPI, packaged in a very small image. Pull it with:

docker pull squidfunk/mkdocs-material

The mkdocs executable is provided as an entrypoint, serve is the default command. Start the development server in your project root with:

docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 -v ${PWD}:/docs squidfunk/mkdocs-material

If you're using Windows command prompt (cmd.exe), substitute ${PWD} with "%cd%".

Usage¶

In order to enable the theme just add one of the following lines to your project's mkdocs.yml. If you installed Material using a package manager:

theme:
  name: 'material'

If you cloned Material from GitHub:

theme:
  name: null
  custom_dir: 'mkdocs-material/material'

MkDocs includes a development server, so you can review your changes as you go. The development server can be started with the following command:

mkdocs serve

Now you can point your browser to http://localhost:8000 and the Material theme should be visible. From here on, you can start writing your documentation, or read on and customize the theme.

Configuration¶

Color palette¶

A default hue is defined for every primary and accent color on Google's Material Design color palette, which makes it very easy to change the overall look of the theme. Just set the primary and accent colors using the following variables:

theme:
  palette:
    primary: 'indigo'
    accent: 'indigo'

Color names are case-insensitive, but must match the names of the Material Design color palette. Valid values are: red, pink, purple, deep purple, indigo, blue, light blue, cyan, teal, green, light green, lime, yellow, amber, orange, deep orange, brown, grey, blue grey and white. The last four colors can only be used as a primary color.

If the color is set via this configuration, an additional CSS file that defines the color palette is automatically included. If you want to keep things lean, clone the repository and recompile the theme with your custom colors set. See the guide on customization for more information.

Primary colors¶

Default: indigo

Click on a tile to change the primary color of the theme:

Red Pink Purple Deep Purple Indigo Blue Light Blue Cyan Teal Green Light Green Lime Yellow Amber Orange Deep Orange Brown Grey Blue Grey Black White

Accent colors¶

Default: indigo

Click on a tile to change the accent color of the theme:

Red Pink Purple Deep Purple Indigo Blue Light Blue Cyan Teal Green Light Green Lime Yellow Amber Orange Deep Orange

Font family¶

Default: Roboto and Roboto Mono

By default the Roboto font family is included with the theme, specifically the regular sans-serif type for text and the monospaced type for code. Both fonts are loaded from Google Fonts and can be changed to other fonts, like for example the Ubuntu font family:

theme:
  font:
    text: 'Ubuntu'
    code: 'Ubuntu Mono'

The text font will be loaded in weights 400 and 700, the monospaced font in regular weight. If you want to load fonts from other destinations or don't want to use the Google Fonts loading magic, just set font to false:

theme:
  font: false

Logo¶

Default icon: school

Your logo should have rectangular shape with a minimum resolution of 128x128, leave some room towards the edges and be composed of high contrast areas on a transparent ground, as it will be placed on the colored header bar and drawer. Simply create the folder docs/images, add your logo and embed it with:

theme:
  logo: 'images/logo.svg'

Additionally, the default icon can be changed by setting an arbitrary ligature (or Unicode code point) from the Material Design icon font, e.g.

theme:
  logo:
    icon: 'cloud'

Language¶

Localization¶

Default: en

Material for MkDocs supports internationalization (i18n) and provides translations for all template variables and labels in the following languages:

Specify the language with:

theme:
  language: 'en'

If the language is not specified, Material falls back to English. To create a translation for another language, copy the localization file of an existing language, name the new file using the 2-letter language code and adjust all translations:

cp partials/language/en.html partials/language/jp.html

Text direction¶

Default: best match for given theme language, automatically set

Material supports both, left-to-right (ltr) and right-to-left (rtl) text direction. This enables more languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac and others to be used with the theme:

theme:
  direction: 'rtl'

Site search¶

Default: best match for given theme language, automatically set

Site search is implemented using lunr.js, which includes stemmers for the English language by default, while stemmers for other languages are included with lunr-languages, both of which are integrated with this theme. Material selects the matching (or best-matching) stemmer for the given theme language. Multilingual search can be activated in your project's mkdocs.yml by explicitly defining the search language(s):

extra:
  search:
    language: 'en, de, ru'

At the time of writing, the following languages are supported:

The separator for tokenization can be customized which makes it possible to index parts of words that are separated by - or .:

extra:
  search:
    tokenizer: '[\s\-\.]+'

Favicon¶

Default: assets/images/favicon.png

The default favicon can be changed by setting the favicon variable to an .ico or image file:

theme:
  favicon: 'assets/images/favicon.ico'

Features¶

Tabs¶

Default: false

By default, the entire navigation is rendered on the left side using collapsible sections (different from the default MkDocs theme which renders the top-level sections in the header), because horizontal navigation is often problematic on smaller screens. However, for large documentation projects it's sometimes desirable to add another navigation layer to separate top-level sections. Material achieves this with the tabs feature, which can be enabled by setting the respective feature flag to true:

theme:
  feature:
    tabs: true

When tabs are enabled, top-level sections will be rendered in an additional layer directly below the header. The navigation on the left side will only include the pages contained within the selected section. Furthermore, top-level pages defined inside your project's mkdocs.yml will be grouped under the first tab which will receive the title of the first page.

Customization¶

Adding a source repository¶

To include a link to the repository of your project within your documentation, set the following variables via your project's mkdocs.yml:

repo_name: 'squidfunk/mkdocs-material'
repo_url: 'https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material'

The name of the repository will be rendered next to the search bar on big screens and as part of the main navigation drawer on smaller screen sizes. Furthermore, if repo_url points to a GitHub, BitBucket or GitLab repository, the respective service logo will be shown next to the name of the repository. Additionally, for GitHub, the number of stars and forks is shown.

If the repository is hosted in a private environment, the service logo can be set explicitly by setting extra.repo_icon to github, gitlab or bitbucket.

Adding social links¶

Social accounts can be linked in the footer of the documentation using the automatically included FontAwesome webfont. The type must denote the name of the social service, e.g. github, twitter or linkedin and the link must contain the URL you want to link to:

extra:
  social:
    - type: 'github'
      link: 'https://github.com/squidfunk'
    - type: 'twitter'
      link: 'https://twitter.com/squidfunk'
    - type: 'linkedin'
      link: 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/squidfunk'

The links are generated in order and the type of the links must match the name of the FontAwesome glyph. The fa is automatically added, so github will result in fa fa-github.

Adding a Web App Manifest¶

A Web App Manifest is a simple JSON file that tells the browser about your web application and how it should behave when installed on the user's mobile device or desktop. You can specify a manifest in your mkdocs.yml:

extra:
  manifest: 'manifest.webmanifest'

More advanced customization¶

If you want to change the general appearance of the Material theme, see this article for more information on advanced customization.

Integrations¶

Google Analytics¶

MkDocs makes it easy to integrate site tracking with Google Analytics. Besides basic tracking, clicks on all outgoing links can be tracked as well as how site search is used. Tracking can be activated in your project's mkdocs.yml:

google_analytics:
  - 'UA-XXXXXXXX-X'
  - 'auto'

Disqus¶

Material for MkDocs is integrated with Disqus, so if you want to add a comments section to your documentation set the shortname of your Disqus project in your mkdocs.yml:

extra:
  disqus: 'your-shortname'

The comments section is inserted on every page, except the index page. Additionally, a new entry at the bottom of the table of contents is generated that is linking to the comments section. The necessary JavaScript is automatically included.

Disqus can also be enabled or disabled for specific pages using Metadata.

Extensions¶

MkDocs supports several Markdown extensions. The following extensions are not enabled by default (see the link for which are enabled by default) but highly recommended, so they should be switched on at all times:

markdown_extensions:
  - admonition
  - codehilite:
      guess_lang: false
  - toc:
      permalink: true

For more information, see the following list of extensions supported by the Material theme including more information regarding installation and usage:

• Admonition
• Codehilite
• Footnotes
• Metadata
• Permalinks
• PyMdown Extensions

Plugins¶

MkDocs's plugin architecture makes it possible to add pre- or post-processing steps that sit between the theme and your documentation. For more information, see the following list of plugins tested and supported by the Material theme including more information regarding installation and usage:

• Minify HTML
• Revision date
• Search

The MkDocs wiki contains a list of all available plugins.

Full example¶

Below is a full example configuration for a mkdocs.yml:

# Project information
site_name: 'Material for MkDocs'
site_description: 'A Material Design theme for MkDocs'
site_author: 'Martin Donath'
site_url: 'https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/'

# Repository
repo_name: 'squidfunk/mkdocs-material'
repo_url: 'https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material'

# Copyright
copyright: 'Copyright © 2016 - 2017 Martin Donath'

# Configuration
theme:
  name: 'material'
  language: 'en'
  palette:
    primary: 'indigo'
    accent: 'indigo'
  font:
    text: 'Roboto'
    code: 'Roboto Mono'

# Customization
extra:
  manifest: 'manifest.webmanifest'
  social:
    - type: 'github'
      link: 'https://github.com/squidfunk'
    - type: 'twitter'
      link: 'https://twitter.com/squidfunk'
    - type: 'linkedin'
      link: 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/squidfunk'

# Google Analytics
google_analytics:
  - 'UA-XXXXXXXX-X'
  - 'auto'

# Extensions
markdown_extensions:
  - admonition
  - codehilite:
      guess_lang: false
  - toc:
      permalink: true