Tangerine UI for Mastodon 🍊🐘

A Tangerine redesign for Mastodon's Web UI, using just CSS. Tangerine UI features a bubblier look, a more compact timeline, round avatars, and a soft color palette.

• Live demo at nileane.fr
• See the announcement post on Mastodon

Variants

• Tangerine 🍊 Default variant for Tangerine UI, featuring a soft orange palette.

• Purple 🪻 For those of you who like Tangerine UI but want to stick to Mastodon's purple palette.

Installation for instance admins

Install Tangerine UI as the only theme on your instance:

• Copy & paste the contents of TangerineUI.css to the Custom CSS field in the administration panel on your Mastodon instance (Navigate to https://domain/admin/settings/appearance).
  • 🪻 For the purple variant, copy the contents of TangerineUI-purple.css instead.
  • ⚠️ Caution: Using the 'Custom CSS' field to apply Tangerine UI will prevent all users on your instance from being able to choose another theme in their settings. Please make sure there is a consensus among your users for doing so. If not, see below how to install Tangerine UI as an optional site theme for your users.

Install Tangerine UI as an optional theme on your instance [Recommended]:

1. Add the files and folders from this repository to your Mastodon themes directory:

app/
  javascript/
    styles/
    tangerineui.scss                          | **new**
    tangerineui-purple.scss                   | **new**
      contrast/
        ...
      fonts/
        ...
      tangerineui/                            | **new**
        layout-single-column.scss             | **new**
      tangerineui-purple/                     | **new**
        layout-single-column.scss             | **new**

2. Add your themes to the config. This is what the default themes.yml looks like in Mastodon. To make Tangerine UI visible in your users's settings, you need to add a new line to themes.yml (`).

default: styles/application.scss
contrast: styles/contrast.scss
mastodon-light: styles/mastodon-light.scss
tangerineui: styles/tangerineui.scss                  | **new**
tangerineui-purple: styles/tangerineui-purple.scss    | **new**

3. Add a human-friendly name for the themes (optional). You can edit each desired language's locale file in config/locales/[lang].yml to add a localized string name for your theme's themeName as added in the previous step. For example, the default config/locales/en.yml contains localizations for the three default themes that ship with Mastodon, into the english language. You need to do this for every language you expect your users to use, or else they will see the unlocalized themeName directly.

themes:
  contrast: Mastodon (High contrast)
  default: Mastodon (Dark)
  mastodon-light: Mastodon (Light)
  tangerineui: Tangerine UI                           | **new**
  tangerineui-purple: Tangerine UI (Purple)           | **new**

4. Compile theme assets and restart. Run RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile and restart your Mastodon instance for the changes to take effect.

Installation for regular users:

• Install a browser extension that allows you to inject CSS on a webpage, such as Stylus, or Live CSS Editor
• Copy & paste the contents of TangerineUI.css to the extension's editor
  • 🪻 For the purple variant, copy the contents of TangerineUI-purple.css instead.

Things to know

• Tangerine UI currently only supports Mastodon's single column layout. The advanced view (multiple columns) will not be affected.
• Tangerine UI auto-switches from light to dark mode based on your OS preference, whether you set your Mastodon theme to Mastodon (Dark) or Mastodon (Light).
• Check your Mastodon instance version before using. The latest Mastodon release checked to be compatible is indicated in the CSS file header.
• Glitch-soc and Hometown instance admins beware: Tangerine UI is currently only meant to be applied to Mastodon's vanilla Dark and Light themes.
  • If you are a user on a Glitch-soc instance using a browser extension, first switch your instance to the vanilla flavour before applying Tangerine UI.

Accessibility

• I have not yet adapted Tangerine to Mastodon's High Contrast theme setting. Please consider that some of your users may depend on it.

Credits

Huge thanks to Roni Laukkarinen whose work on Mastodon Bird UI I adapted for multiple parts of the redesign. The icon replacement implementations I have also adapted from Bird UI.

<3

If you enjoy Tangerine UI, jobless me would really appreciate a tip 💛!