I’m trying to add a modified css for lemmy-ui to my self-hosted instance running on Docker. I’m following this guide but the custom theme is just showing up as litely. Steps taken:
- Went to bootstrap.build, made the necessary edits.
- Exported the
bootstrap.min.cssas well as the_variables.scss - Renamed them to
theme-name.cssand_variables.theme-name.scss - Do the necessary bind mounts so lemmy-ui can access the files. Can confirm the files are correct and appear within the container.
- From lemmy web ui, select from drop down the theme called
theme-name(it shows up with the right name and all). - Press Save, but theme is just litely.
- Use dev tools on browser and can confirm
theme-name.cssis just the litely css.cat theme-name.csswithin the container is showing the right content. LEMMY_UI_EXTRA_THEMES_FOLDERis set correctly since the option fortheme-nameis showing up, it’s just loading litely instead.
Not sure what I’m doing wrong here :/

OK, thanks for the input. My theory at the moment is that Lemmy doesn’t actually need the SCSS files. If you look at the CSS file, it doesn’t reference the variables at all. That’s why you’ve had success modifying the CSS by hand. Somebody in the Matrix chat said that they pulled down the
lemmy-uicode so that they could generate the CSS file in the same way that the built-in themes do. I’m going to take a look at that now and see if there’s a way to extract that portion.Ah that would make sense as to why the SCSS files don’t do anything.
I think I have this figured out. See my post here: https://tkohhh.social/post/4829