tailwindcss-default-shades simplifies working with color shades by introducing default aliases. It is a function that wraps the colors defined in your Tailwind CSS config file. With tailwindcss-default-shades in use, you can use colors without specifying a shade, like bg-blue instead of bg-blue-500.

• Installation
• Usage
  • Specifying Default Shades
    • Example: Single Default Shade
    • Example: Granular Default Shades
• Why Use tailwindcss-default-shades

Installation

You can install the plugin via npm:

npm install tailwindcss-default-shades

Usage

By default, tailwindcss-default-shades automatically maps the 500 shade of each color as its base name. This means that specifying a class like bg-blue will effectively apply the bg-blue-500 shade.

const defaultShades = require('tailwindcss-default-shades');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    defaultShades({
      blue: {
        // ...
        500: '#3b82f6',
        // ...
      }
    }),
  ]
};

In this example, the bg-blue class will apply the bg-blue-500 shade, #3b82f6.

The default shade can, however, be overridden by specifying a different shade as the second argument in the tailwindcss-default-shades function, or even an object specifying which shade to use per color in your colors object, with an optional fallback for unspecified colors, which also defaults to 500.

Specifying Default Shades

If you wish to customize the default shades for specific colors, you can do so by providing a different shade key, or an object with the color name as the key and the default shade as the value, as the second argument in the tailwindcss-default-shades function.

Example: Single Default Shade

const defaultShades = require('tailwindcss-default-shades');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    defaultShades({
      red: { /* your shades */ },
      green: { /* your shades */ },
      blue: { /* your shades */ },
    }, 300),
  ]
};

In this example, the bg-blue class will apply the bg-blue-300 shade, and the bg-red and bg-green classes will apply the bg-red-300 and bg-green-300 shades, respectively.

Example: Granular Default Shades

const defaultShades = require('tailwindcss-default-shades');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    defaultShades({
      red: { /* your shades */ },
      green: { /* your shades */ },
      blue: { /* your shades */ },
    }, {
      DEFAULT: 100,
      red: 300,
      green: 400,
    }),
  ]
};

In this example, the bg-red class will apply the bg-red-300 shade, the bg-green class will apply the bg-green-400 shade, and the bg-blue class will apply the bg-blue-100 shade because it falls back to the DEFAULT shade. Had DEFAULT not been specified in this example, the bg-blue class would have applied the bg-blue-500 shade, as 500 is the general default shade.

Why Use tailwindcss-default-shades

tailwindcss-default-shades enhances your workflow by reducing the need to specify shades explicitly when a default shade suffices. This leads to cleaner, more readable utility class usage without sacrificing the flexibility and power that Tailwind CSS offers.

To experiment with tailwindcss-default-shades, try out the demo here on Tailwind Play: https://play.tailwindcss.com/x7YCj9Dauo

I hope you find tailwindcss-default-shades a valuable addition to your Tailwind CSS toolkit. If you have any feedback or suggestions, don't hesitate to open an issue or pull request.

Enjoy more simplified styles with tailwindcss-default-shades! 🚀

I hope you find tailwindcss-default-shades a valuable addition to your projects. If you have any issues or suggestions, don't hesitate to open an issue or pull request.

If you liked this, you might also like my other Tailwind CSS plugins:

• tailwindcss-multi: Group utilities together by variant
• tailwindcss-signals: Apply styles based on parent or ancestor state, a state-driven alterative to groups
• tailwindcss-members: Apply styles based on child or descendant state, the inverse of groups
• tailwindcss-mixins: Construct reusable & aliased sets of utilities inline
• tailwind-lerp-colors: Expand your color horizons and take the fuss out of generating new—or expanding existing—color palettes
• tailwindcss-selector-patterns: Dynamic CSS selector patterns
• tailwindcss-js: Effortless build-time JS script injection
• tailwindcss-directional-shadows: Supercharge your shadow utilities with added directional support (includes directional shadow-border utilities too ✨)