Configuration

Just the Docs has some specific configuration parameters that can be defined in your Jekyll site’s _config.yml file.

Table of contents

  2. Site favicon
  3. Search
  4. Mermaid Diagrams
  5. Aux links
  6. Navigation sidebar
  7. Heading anchor links
  8. External navigation links
  9. Footer content
  10. Color scheme
  11. Callouts
  12. Google Analytics
  13. Document collections

View this site’s _config.yml file as an example.

# Set a path/url to a logo that will be displayed instead of the title
logo: "/assets/images/just-the-docs.png"

Site favicon

# Set a path/url to a favicon that will be displayed by the browser
favicon_ico: "/assets/images/favicon.ico"

If the path to your favicon is /favicon.ico, you can leave favicon_ico unset.

# Enable or disable the site search
# Supports true (default) or false
search_enabled: true

search:
  # Split pages into sections that can be searched individually
  # Supports 1 - 6, default: 2
  heading_level: 2
  # Maximum amount of previews per search result
  # Default: 3
  previews: 3
  # Maximum amount of words to display before a matched word in the preview
  # Default: 5
  preview_words_before: 5
  # Maximum amount of words to display after a matched word in the preview
  # Default: 10
  preview_words_after: 10
  # Set the search token separator
  # Default: /[\s\-/]+/
  # Example: enable support for hyphenated search words
  tokenizer_separator: /[\s/]+/
  # Display the relative url in search results
  # Supports true (default) or false
  rel_url: true
  # Enable or disable the search button that appears in the bottom right corner of every page
  # Supports true or false (default)
  button: false
  # Focus the search input by pressing `ctrl + focus_shortcut_key` (or `cmd + focus_shortcut_key` on macOS)
  focus_shortcut_key: 'k'

Mermaid Diagrams

New (v0.4.0)

The minimum configuration requires the key for version (from jsDelivr) in _config.yml:

mermaid:
  # Version of mermaid library
  # Pick an available version from https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/mermaid/
  version: "9.1.3"

Provide a path instead of a version key to load the mermaid library from a local file.

See the Code documentation for more configuration options and information.

# Aux links for the upper right navigation
aux_links:
  "Just the Docs on GitHub":
    - "//github.com/just-the-docs/just-the-docs"

# Makes Aux links open in a new tab. Default is false
aux_links_new_tab: false

# Enable or disable the side/mobile menu globally
# Nav menu can also be selectively enabled or disabled using page variables or the minimal layout
nav_enabled: true

# Heading anchor links appear on hover over h1-h6 tags in page content
# allowing users to deep link to a particular heading on a page.
#
# Supports true (default) or false
heading_anchors: true

New (v0.4.0)

External links can be added to the navigation through the nav_external_links option. See Navigation Structure for more details.

Footer content

# Footer content
# appears at the bottom of every page's main content
# Note: The footer_content option is deprecated and will be removed in a future major release. Please use `_includes/footer_custom.html` for more robust
markup / liquid-based content.
footer_content: "Copyright &copy; 2017-2020 Patrick Marsceill. Distributed by an <a href=\"https://github.com/just-the-docs/just-the-docs/tree/main/LICENSE.txt\">MIT license.</a>"

# Footer last edited timestamp
last_edit_timestamp: true # show or hide edit time - page must have `last_modified_date` defined in the frontmatter
last_edit_time_format: "%b %e %Y at %I:%M %p" # uses ruby's time format: https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.7.0/libdoc/time/rdoc/Time.html

# Footer "Edit this page on GitHub" link text
gh_edit_link: true # show or hide edit this page link
gh_edit_link_text: "Edit this page on GitHub."
gh_edit_repository: "https://github.com/just-the-docs/just-the-docs" # the github URL for your repo
gh_edit_branch: "main" # the branch that your docs is served from
# gh_edit_source: docs # the source that your files originate from
gh_edit_view_mode: "tree" # "tree" or "edit" if you want the user to jump into the editor immediately

note: footer_content is deprecated, but still supported. For a better experience we have moved this into an include called _includes/footer_custom.html which will allow for robust markup / liquid-based content.

  • the “page last modified” data will only display if a page has a key called last_modified_date, formatted in some readable date format
  • last_edit_time_format uses Ruby’s DateTime formatter; for examples and information, please refer to the official Ruby docs on strftime formatting
  • gh_edit_repository is the URL of the project’s GitHub repository
  • gh_edit_branch is the branch that the docs site is served from; defaults to main
  • gh_edit_source is the source directory that your project files are stored in (should be the same as site.source)
  • gh_edit_view_mode is "tree" by default, which brings the user to the github page; switch to "edit" to bring the user directly into editing mode

Color scheme

# Color scheme supports "light" (default) and "dark"
color_scheme: dark

See Customization for more information.

Callouts

New (v0.4.0)

To use this feature, you need to configure a color and (optionally) title for each kind of callout you want to use, e.g.:

callouts:
  warning:
    title: Warning
    color: red

This uses the color $red-000 for the background of the callout, and $red-300 for the title and box decoration.1 You can then style a paragraph as a warning callout like this:

{: .warning }
A paragraph...

The colors grey-lt, grey-dk, purple, blue, green, yellow, and red are predefined; to use a custom color, you need to define its 000 and 300 levels in your SCSS files. For example, to use pink, add the following to your _sass/custom/setup.scss file:

$pink-000: #f77ef1;
$pink-100: #f967f1;
$pink-200: #e94ee1;
$pink-300: #dd2cd4;

You can override the default opacity of the background for a particular callout, e.g.:

callouts:
  custom:
    color: pink
    opacity: 0.3

You can change the default opacity (0.2) for all callouts, e.g.:

callouts_opacity: 0.3

You can also adjust the overall level of callouts. The value of callouts_level is either quiet or loud; loud increases the saturation and lightness of the backgrounds. The default level is quiet when using the light or custom color schemes, and loud when using the dark color scheme.

See Callouts for more information.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 will replace Universal Analytics. On July 1, 2023, standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits. The earlier you migrate, the more historical data and insights you will have in Google Analytics 4.

Universal Analytics (UA) and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) properties are supported.

# Google Analytics Tracking (optional)
# Supports a CSV of tracking ID strings (eg. "UA-1234567-89,G-1AB234CDE5")
ga_tracking: UA-2709176-10
ga_tracking_anonymize_ip: true # Use GDPR compliant Google Analytics settings (true/nil by default)

Multiple IDs

New (v0.4.0)

This theme supports multiple comma-separated tracking IDs. This helps seamlessly transition UA properties to GA4 properties by tracking both for a while.

ga_tracking: "UA-1234567-89,G-1AB234CDE5"

Document collections

By default, the navigation and search include normal pages. You can also use Jekyll collections which group documents semantically together.

Collection folders always start with an underscore (_), e.g. _tests. You won’t see your collections if you omit the prefix.

For example, put all your test files in the _tests folder and create the tests collection:

# Define Jekyll collections
collections:
  # Define a collection named "tests", its documents reside in the "_tests" directory
  tests:
    permalink: "/:collection/:path/"
    output: true

just_the_docs:
  # Define which collections are used in just-the-docs
  collections:
    # Reference the "tests" collection
    tests:
      # Give the collection a name
      name: Tests
      # Exclude the collection from the navigation
      # Supports true or false (default)
      # nav_exclude: true
      # Fold the collection in the navigation
      # Supports true or false (default)
      # nav_fold: true  # note: this option is new in v0.4
      # Exclude the collection from the search
      # Supports true or false (default)
      # search_exclude: true

The navigation for all your normal pages (if any) is displayed before those in collections.

New (v0.4.0) Including nav_fold: true in a collection configuration folds that collection: an expander symbol appears next to the collection name, and clicking it displays/hides the links to the top-level pages of the collection.2

You can reference multiple collections. This creates categories in the navigation with the configured names.

collections:
  tests:
    permalink: "/:collection/:path/"
    output: true
  tutorials:
    permalink: "/:collection/:path/"
    output: true

just_the_docs:
  collections:
    tests:
      name: Tests
    tutorials:
      name: Tutorials

When all your pages are in a single collection, its name is not displayed.

The navigation for each collection is a separate name space for page titles: a page in one collection cannot be a child of a page in a different collection, or of a normal page.

  1. If you use the dark color scheme, this callout uses $red-300 for the background, and $red-000 for the title. ↩

  2. New (v0.6.0) When JavaScript is disabled in the browser, all folded collections are automatically expanded, since clicking expander symbols has no effect. (In previous releases, navigation into folded collections required JavaScript to be enabled.) ↩