Django Postbox

Themes

The inbox comes in four looks. They change nothing but the styling, so pick the one you like to look at all day.

An inbox in the modern theme
modern, the default: rounded cards with blue accents, following your light or dark mode.

Choose a theme #

Set the default for everyone:

settings.py
POSTBOX_THEME = "mail2000"

Everyone can still pick their own under Options, top right in the inbox. That choice is kept in a cookie in their browser, so it sticks without touching your settings. The page is rendered with the right stylesheet from the start, so it never flashes in the wrong theme.

Write your own theme #

A theme is a single CSS file. The base stylesheet takes care of the layout and exposes its colours and fonts as CSS variables, so a theme mostly sets those.

  1. Add the file to a static folder of one of your apps:

    • myapp/
      • static/
        • postbox/
          • themes/
            • sunset.cssyour theme

  2. Set the variables, and add any extra styling you like on top of the pb- classes:

    myapp/static/postbox/themes/sunset.css
    :root {
  --pb-bg: #fff7ed;
  --pb-surface: #ffffff;
  --pb-text: #431407;
  --pb-muted: #9a3412;
  --pb-border: #fed7aa;
  --pb-accent: #ea580c;
  --pb-select: #ffedd5;
  --pb-select-text: #431407;
  --pb-font: Georgia, serif;
}

.pb-header {
  background: #ea580c;
  color: #fff;
}

  3. Use it:

    settings.py
    POSTBOX_THEME = "sunset"

    Your theme also shows up under Options, next to the bundled ones.

Tip

The bundled themes in django_postbox/static/postbox/themes/ are the best examples: copy one and start changing colours.

POSTBOX_THEME = None turns themes off and leaves the plain base stylesheet.

Bring your own htmx #

The inbox uses a copy of htmx that ships with the package, so nothing loads from a CDN. If your project already loads htmx on every page, switch the bundled copy off and load yours in an overridden postbox/base.html ({% block extra_head %}):

settings.py
POSTBOX_LOAD_HTMX = False