Themes

Customize the visual appearance of OpenAnalyst with light and dark modes, custom color schemes, and per-dashboard theme settings.

Light and Dark Mode

OpenAnalyst supports light mode, dark mode, and system-preference detection. The default theme respects your operating system setting and switches automatically when the system preference changes. You can override this at the profile level from Settings > Appearance.

Dark mode uses a deep neutral background palette optimized for long working sessions and for displaying data-dense visualizations with high contrast. Light mode uses clean white and light gray surfaces, suited for shared screens, presentations, and printed exports.

Tip: Exported PDFs and shared public dashboards always render in light mode by default, regardless of your personal preference setting, to ensure legibility in most viewing contexts. You can override this per dashboard in share settings.

Custom Color Schemes

Beyond light and dark, you can define a custom color scheme that replaces the default accent color (OpenAnalyst orange) with your brand color. Custom schemes are available on Pro, Max, and Enterprise plans.

  1. Go to Settings > Appearance > Custom Theme.
  2. Enter your primary brand color as a hex value.
  3. OpenAnalyst generates a full palette — including lighter and darker tints, hover states, and accessible text colors — automatically.
  4. Preview the palette across all UI components in the live preview panel.
  5. Save and apply to the workspace.

Note: Custom color schemes are applied workspace-wide. All members see the custom theme. Individual members cannot override it with a different custom color, though they can still switch between light and dark base modes.

Chart Color Palettes

Chart series colors are drawn from a configurable palette. The default palette is designed for accessibility, with colors distinguishable by both color-sighted and color-blind users. Four built-in palettes are available:

  • Default — OpenAnalyst branded palette, 10 distinct colors.
  • Accessible — High-contrast palette verified against WCAG 2.1 AA for color blindness.
  • Monochrome — Shades of a single hue — useful for printed reports.
  • Sequential — A gradient palette for heatmaps and choropleth maps where color intensity encodes magnitude.

Custom palettes can be defined by providing up to 12 hex color values. Palettes are saved per workspace and can be set as the workspace default or applied per chart.

Dashboard Themes

Each dashboard can have its own theme override independent of the workspace default. This is useful for executive-facing dashboards that require branded styling, or for embedding dashboards in external portals with different visual requirements.

Dashboard theme settings are found in the dashboard editor under Dashboard Settings > Appearance. Options include:

  • Base mode (light, dark, or system).
  • Chart color palette override.
  • Custom background color.
  • Font size scale (compact, standard, large) for accessibility.
  • Card border style (none, subtle, or prominent).

Themes on Shared Dashboards

When a dashboard is shared via a public link or embedded via iframe, the theme applied is determined by the dashboard-level setting, not the viewer's personal preference. This ensures visual consistency for all external viewers regardless of their device or browser settings. Authenticated shared dashboards (shared within the workspace) do respect the recipient's personal light/dark preference.