Global Styles

GlobalStyle is a new component in v1 that injects styles defined in theme.styles.global into the global styles of your app or website.

This allows you define theme-aware styles for any elements.

How it works#

By using ChakraProvider at the root of your application, we automatically render a GlobalStyle component. Here's what GlobalStyle does under the hood:

Reads the styles defined in theme.styles.global, this style can be a style object or a function that returns a style object.
Process the styles and pass it to emotion's Global component which is used to handle global style injection.

// 1. Using a style object
const theme = {
  styles: {
    global: {
      "html, body": {
        fontSize: "sm",
        color: "gray.600",
        lineHeight: "tall",
      },
      a: {
        color: "teal.500",
      },
    },
  },
}
// 2. Using a function
// NB: Chakra gives you access to `colorMode` and `theme` in `props`
const theme = {
  styles: {
    global: (props) => ({
      "html, body": {
        fontSize: "sm",
        color: props.colorMode === "dark" ? "white" : "gray.600",
        lineHeight: "tall",
      },
      a: {
        color: props.colorMode === "dark" ? "teal.300" : "teal.500",
      },
    }),
  },
}

Default styles#

The default Chakra theme provides sensible global styles. Here's what it looks like:

const styles = {
  global: (props) => ({
    fontFamily: "body",
    color: mode("gray.800", "whiteAlpha.900")(props),
    bg: mode("white", "gray.800")(props),
    lineHeight: "base",
    "*::placeholder": {
      color: mode("gray.400", "whiteAlpha.400")(props),
    },
    "*, *::before, &::after": {
      borderColor: mode("gray.200", "whiteAlpha.300")(props),
      wordWrap: "break-word",
    },
    fontFeatureSettings: `"pnum"`,
    fontVariantNumeric: "proportional-nums",
  }),
}

Note 🚨: mode(lightMode, darkMode)(props) function is the same as props.colorMode === "dark" ? darkMode : lightMode

Styling non-Chakra elements globally#

When combining Chakra with other libraries, you might need a way to style some elements in those libraries using the theme defined tokens.

Let's say you have a blog written in mdx and you'd like to style all the MDX elements globally. Here's what you'll do.

// 1. Wrap the rendered mdx in a container
const MDXWrapper = (props) => <div className="mdx-prose" {...props} />
// 2. Define global styles
// PRO TIP: Again, you can also use the function version here
const theme = {
  styles: {
    global: {
      ".mdx-prose": {
        h1: {
          fontSize: "xl",
          mb: "4",
        },
        p: {
          fontSize: "sm",
          lineHeight: "1.4",
        },
      },
    },
  },
}
// 3. That's it! Your app will now read and use the global styles

Community examples#

To help you better understand this concept, here are links to community projects that use custom global styles.

Gatsby Starter i18n

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