Themes

_{Last updated: October 6, 2026 | 4 minutes read}

A theme is a named set of colours for a style, such as Day, Night or a customer's brand. You switch between themes and edit inside one; everything that is not a colour stays the same in all of them. Themes are for trying out colour versions in Studio: in an app, a style has one set of colours, so each theme is downloaded as its own file.

A style before its first theme.

Themes live in the Theme bar at the top of the Shared colours screen. Until a style has one, the dropdown reads "No theme".

Step by step

Make a Night theme

1. Open Shared colours on the rail.
2. Click + New, type Day and press Create theme. Day records the style's current look, so it stays one click away.
3. With Day selected, click + New again, type Night and press Create theme. Night starts as a copy of Day, and you are now editing Night.
4. Recolour the map for the night. In the Colours tab, open a colour such as water, land or a road and pick a darker value; every layer using it follows. Colour edits on the Layers screen belong to Night as well while it is selected.
5. Switch between Day and Night in the Theme dropdown to compare. Widths, zoom ranges, filters and visibility are the same in both.
6. Download each theme as its own file for your app: in the Download dialog, pick the theme, then download (see Download).

The one rule

With a theme selected, a colour change belongs to that theme, wherever you make it: in Shared colours, on the palette, or on a layer in the Properties column. Everything else belongs to the style and applies to every theme: widths, opacity, zoom ranges, filters, visibility, and layers added or removed.

While a theme is selected, the Properties column says which theme it is editing.

Creating, switching and deleting

• + New makes a theme from what is on screen: every colour and the palette. With a theme selected, the new theme is a copy of it. Using the name of an existing theme replaces it, and the button says Replace theme.
• The dropdown switches the map to another theme. Each theme remembers every layer's colours, including a layer you recoloured on its own, so switching back brings everything back exactly. A switch is one step in History, and Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on a Mac) returns to the theme you were in.
• × beside the dropdown deletes the selected theme after asking. The map keeps what it shows, and you continue in the next theme. Ctrl+Z undoes it.

Right after creating Night, you are editing it.

Once a style has a theme, the "No theme" entry leaves the dropdown, so create Day first if you want to keep the look you started with.

Downloading a theme

In the Download dialog, pick the theme the file should hold; the map switches to it, and the file name gets the theme's name, such as basic-1-night. If your app needs both a day and a night look, download each theme as its own file, and the app loads one or the other (see Switching between two styles).

With themes in the style, Download asks which one the file should hold.

See also: Shared colours · Download · History