Nightwind is a plugin for Tailwindcss that automatically generates the dark mode of any Tailwind website, while also giving full customisation options.

jjranalli / nightwind

An automatic, customisable, overridable Tailwind dark mode plugin

From now on, I'll be creating the dark mode of well-known Tailwind websites to explore how Nightwind behaves in different cases. Especially, the effectiveness of its automatic dark mode.

What Nightwind does is essentially invert the color classes used throughout a website (for example, a bg-red-300 turns into bg-red-600). Thanks to the curated Tailwind color palette, this usually results in a good-looking, coherent dark mode.

I picked tailwindcss.com as the first one, as I felt it would've been the most challenging given the complexity and extensive use of color classes throughout the websites.

You can check the dark version of the homepage and the whole documentation here -> https://night-tailwindcss.vercel.app (press the Nightwind toggle in the navbar)

How I did it

1. Set up Nightwind in next.js, using 'next-themes'

I use ThemeProvider to manage light and dark modes, setting the storageKey parameter to 'nightwind-mode' to make sure the chosen mode persists.

// _app.js
import { ThemeProvider } from "next-themes"

function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }) {
  return (
    <ThemeProvider
      attribute="class"
      storageKey="nightwind-mode"
      defaultTheme="system" // default "light"
    >
      <Component {...pageProps} />
    </ThemeProvider>
  )
}

export default MyApp

In _document.js I simply add the "nightwind" class to the Html element, which is used by Nightwind to manage transitions between modes.

// _document.js
import Document, { Html, Head, Main, NextScript } from "next/document"

class MyDocument extends Document {
  static async getInitialProps(ctx) {
    const initialProps = await Document.getInitialProps(ctx)
    return { ...initialProps }
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <Html className="nightwind">
        <Head />
        <body>
          <Main />
          <NextScript />
        </body>
      </Html>
    )
  }
}

export default MyDocument

2. Set up a toggle

import { useTheme } from "next-themes"

export default function Toggle() {
  const { theme, setTheme } = useTheme()

  const toggle = () => {
    if (!document.documentElement.classList.contains("dark")) {
      setTheme("dark")
    } else {
      setTheme("light")
    }
  }

  return <button onClick={toggle}>Toggle</button>
}

3. Add Nightwind into Tailwind.config.js

Finally, I specify what colorClasses and variants I want Nightwind to invert, as well as add the "typography: true" option to invert all colors used by the typography plugin (used in the tailwind documentation).

module.exports = {
  darkMode: "class",
  theme: {
     nightwind: {
       typography: true,
       colorClasses: ['gradient', 'ring', 'ring-offset', 'divide', 'placeholder'],
     },
  variants: {
    nightwind: ['group-hover', 'active', 'focus'],
  },
  plugins: [require("nightwind")],
}

Note: There are also some minor modifications that were made to make everything work seamlessly. You can explore the full commit here

To learn more about Nightwind, I suggest you visit:

Thanks for reading! And if you have any suggestion about what other Tailwind website I should create the dark mode for, please let me know! :)

Blog

How I built the dark mode of tailwindcss.com (website + docs) in 10 minutes using Nightwind & Next.js

jj_ranalli