Theme

Changing themes in Tamagui is as easy as passing their name to the Theme component.

Change themes anywhere in your app like so:

import { Button, Theme } from 'tamagui' // or '@tamagui/core'

export default () => (
  <Theme name="dark">
    <Button>I'm a dark button</Button>
  </Theme>
)

There is one special property of themes that's very helpful for what is essentially sub-themes, or tints.

Basically, if you have a base dark theme and a light theme, you may want to have "tinted" versions of those themes. For example light_pink and dark_pink. Instead of having hard-coded color values like $pink3, you create as many pink themes as you want: light_pink_alt1, light_pink_alt2, etc.

Each of those themes is recommended to be small: just having values that map to ViewStyle or TextStyle, like $color (and that can postfix pseudo states, like $colorHover).

Then, you just give your component a theme="pink" prop, or wrap it in <Theme name="pink" />. Note you can leave out the light_ or even light_pink prefix, Tamagui will nest properly so long as the parent is set.

It's easier to understand with an example. First, define your tokens and themes:

import { createTamagui, createTokens } from 'tamagui'

const tokens = createTokens({
  color: {
    pinkDark: '#610c62',
    pinkLight: '#f17efc',
  },
  // ... see configuration docs for required tokens
})

export default createTamagui({
  tokens,
  themes: {
    dark: {
      background: '#000',
      color: '#fff',
    },
    light: {
      color: '#000',
      background: '#fff',
    },
    dark_pink: {
      background: tokens.color.pinkDark,
      color: tokens.color.pinkLight,
    },
    light_pink: {
      background: tokens.color.pinkLight,
      color: tokens.color.pinkDark,
    },
  },
})

Using the _pink suffix, the Theme component will now let us automatically do sub-theming:

import { Button, Theme } from 'tamagui'

export default () => {
  return (
    <Theme name="dark">
      <Button>I have the theme dark</Button>
      <Theme name="pink">
        <Button>I have the theme pink-dark</Button>
      </Theme>
    </Theme>
  )
}

Notice we just use the name pink. Because theres no pink theme, the Theme component will automatically check if theres a theme that matches the pattern [currentThemeName]_[givenName], in this case dark_pink. This is really useful for things like having an active or error theme that match your parent theme styles.

Inverse

The inverse prop will change any dark theme to light, and vice-versa. If it's a sub-theme, it'll check for matching parents, so dark_red will inverse to light_red if possible:

import { Button, H5, Theme, XStack, YStack, useThemeName } from 'tamagui'

export function ThemeInverseDemo() {
  const themeName = useThemeName()
  const opposite = themeName.includes('dark') ? 'light' : 'dark'

  return (
    <XStack space>
      <Buttons title="Normal" name={themeName} />
      <Theme inverse>
        <Buttons
          title="Inversed"
          name={themeName.replace(themeName.split('_')[0], opposite)}
        />
      </Theme>
    </XStack>
  )
}

function Buttons(props: { name: string; title: string }) {
  return (
    <YStack
      elevation="$4"
      backgroundColor="$background"
      padding="$4"
      borderRadius="$4"
      space="$3"
    >
      <H5>{props.title}</H5>
      <Button>{props.name}</Button>
      <Button themeInverse>inversed</Button>
      <Button theme="alt1">{props.name}_alt1</Button>
      <Theme name="yellow">
        <Button>{props.name.split('_')[0] + '_yellow'}</Button>
      </Theme>
    </YStack>
  )
}

Reset

The reset prop will change the theme to the grandparent's value:

<Theme name="dark">
  <Theme name="pink">
    <Theme reset>
      {/* This square and all children will have theme "dark" */}
      <Square bg="$background" size={10} />
    </Theme>
  </Theme>
</Theme>

themeable()

The themeable helper function is a "higher order component" that wraps any React component definition and adds two props:

• theme for changing the theme on that component and its children
• themeInverse which wraps the component with <Theme inverse>

It's used for example on Button.