thematic

Simplified theming of ggplot2, lattice, and base R graphics. In addition to providing a centralized approach to styling R graphics, thematic also enables automatic styling of R plots in Shiny, R Markdown, and RStudio.

Installation

thematic is not yet available on CRAN, but you can install it now with:

remotes::install_github("rstudio/thematic")
library(thematic)

For auto theming in Shiny, you’ll need shiny v.1.5.0 or higher.

install.packages("shiny")

For auto theming in R Markdown, you’ll currently need an experimental version of rmarkdown:

remotes::install_github("rstudio/rmarkdown#1706")

Overview

thematic’s auto theming gives R plots the ability to style themselves inside Shiny (via CSS), R Markdown (via bootstraplib), and RStudio (via RStudio themes). For a quick example, here’s a shiny::tabsetPanel() with custom CSS styling, but default R styling:

To add automatic coloring and fonts (i.e., the full auto theming experience) to the R plots, simply call thematic_on(font = "auto") and re-run the application. Since the plots are generated via Shiny, they assume new defaults which are informed by the CSS styling on their HTML container (that is, notice how the R plots now reflect the styling of the shiny::tabsetPanel()). Moreover, as long as the relevant font is a Google Font (in this case, Pacifico), thematic automatically downloads, caches, and registers font(s) with R.

Instead of relying on thematic to automatically detect colors and fonts in the plot’s container, you can also specify them directly in thematic_on().

thematic_on(bg = "#222222", fg = "white", accent = "#0CE3AC", font = "Oxanium")

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg, label = rownames(mtcars), color = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_point() +
  ggrepel::geom_text_repel()

In addition to thematic_on(), which applies the provided theme to all plots (up until thematic_off() is called), there are a few variation of thematic_on() which temporarily apply the given theme:

• thematic_shiny(): apply theme up until the next Shiny app exits. Use this over thematic_on() in Shiny apps.
• thematic_rmd(): apply theme up until the next R Markdown document exits. Use this over thematic_on() in R Markdown documents.
• thematic_with_theme(): apply theme up until the provided plot expr is evaluated. Use this to apply different themes to different plots within a Shiny app.

Learn more

• See the auto theming article to gain an understanding of how auto theming make styling R plots easier in Shiny, R Markdown, and RStudio.
• See the custom themes article for more on thematic’s theming options as well as how they interact with ggplot2, lattice, and base.
• See the fonts article for more on using Google Fonts with thematic.
• See the scoping article for more about restoring state after using thematic.

Run some examples

Below is a link to an RStudio Cloud instance with some ready to run thematic examples:

Code of Conduct

thematic is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.