Skip to content
Macro DeckMacro Deck Docs

Theming

Name a role for anything the theme owns, and send a literal #rrggbb only for a colour that is data.

Example

Section titled “Example”
new UiStack
{
    Key = "status",
    Justify = UiComponentJustify.Center,
    Gap = 0.03,
    Padding = safeArea,
    Children =
    [
        new UiTextRun { Key = "name", Text = "Studio mic", Size = 0.12, Weight = UiComponentTextWeights.SemiBold },
        new UiTextRun { Key = "state", Text = "Live", Size = 0.1, Color = "#34c759" },
        new UiTextRun { Key = "source", Text = "Input 2 - USB interface", Size = 0.08, Role = UiComponentTextRoles.Secondary },
        new UiTextRun { Key = "updated", Text = "Updated 2 min ago", Size = 0.07, Role = UiComponentTextRoles.Muted },
        new UiSlider { Key = "level", Level = 0.6, MainSize = 0.16, Thickness = UiSize.FromBasis(0.06) },
    ],
}

A dark tile: Studio mic in white, Live in green, two lines of grey detail and a blue slider

The same tree in the light theme: the text roles and the background invert, Live stays green and the slider stays blue

The same tree in the dark and light theme. Roles repaint with no help from your view; the literal green does not; the slider has no LevelColor, so it paints the reader’s own accent colour.

Roles

Section titled “Roles”
Role Dark Light For
UiComponentTextRoles.Primary (primary) #ffffff #121212 The most prominent text. The default.
UiComponentTextRoles.Secondary (secondary) #a0a0a0 #666666 Supporting detail.
UiComponentTextRoles.Muted (muted) #666666 #999999 Incidental detail.
Accent (no role name - omit the colour) user’s choice user’s choice The same in both themes.

Values are the built-in themes’ current tokens, shown for orientation: a reader resolves roles against its own live theme, so do not copy them into your tree. Resolving the accent to hex and sending that would freeze it against the reader’s theme.

Literal colours

Section titled “Literal colours”
Color = "#34c759"        // accepted
Color = "#3c5"           // rejected: treated as absent
Color = "green"          // rejected: treated as absent

Send a literal only where the colour is data - a value’s colour, or one a person picked - which must not change when the reader switches theme. A reader accepts exactly # plus six hex digits and rejects any other spelling rather than passing it to its styling layer, so the property behaves as if omitted.

Property Takes Omitted means
UiTextRun.Role a role primary
UiTextRun.Color #rrggbb, overrides Role the role decides
UiStack.Background, UiList.Background #rrggbb paints nothing
UiButton.Background #rrggbb the reader’s accent colour
UiButton.BorderColor #rrggbb the border style supplies its own colour
UiSlider.LevelColor #rrggbb the reader’s accent colour
UiChart.Color #rrggbb the reader’s accent colour
UiProgressBar.StartColor, .EndColor #rrggbb the reader’s accent colour, each end on its own
UiRangeBar.StartColor, .EndColor #rrggbb no fill; the span needs both
UiDynamicText.Role / .Color, UiProgressText.Role as UiTextRun as UiTextRun
UiClockDial.Color #rrggbb for the text-coloured marks the marks keep the theme colours
UiModifier.Background #rrggbb, or a linear or radial gradient of #rrggbb stops the node’s own background
UiModifier.BorderColor #rrggbb the reader’s choice

A gradient is data like any other literal: each stop is #rrggbb and none of them follows the theme.

A view paints no background unless a stack, list, button or modifier sets one; the surface behind it belongs to the reader and follows its theme.

Text

Section titled “Text”
new UiTextRun { Key = "title", Text = localizedTitle, Wrap = true, FontFace = fontId }

Text should be a localization reference, not a resolved string: UiText accepts a LocalizedString and each client resolves it in its own language, so one shared session serves clients in different languages and a language change is a client-side re-render.

Without Wrap a run stays on one line and ellipsizes, which is also what a reader that does not know the key does. FontFace names a face in Macro Deck’s font catalogue - an identifier, not a resource handle. A reader holds the run back until the face is usable instead of swapping from a fallback, and shows it in its default face if the face never arrives or cannot be resolved.

See also

Section titled “See also”