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Appearance prop

Customizing the appearance of Clerk components is a powerful way to make your application look and feel unique. Clerk provides a way to customize the appearance of its components using the appearance prop.

The appearance prop can be applied to <ClerkProvider> to share styles across every component, or individually to any of the Clerk components.

This applies to all of the React-based packages, like Next.js, as well as the pure JavaScript ClerkJS package.

Properties

The appearance prop accepts the following properties:

  • Name
    baseTheme?
    Type
    BaseTheme | BaseTheme[]
    Description

    A theme used as the base theme for the components. For more information, see Themes.

  • Name
    layout?
    Type
    Layout
    Description

    Configuration options that affect the layout of the components, allowing customizations that are hard to implement with just CSS. For more information, see Layout.

  • Name
    variables?
    Type
    Variables
    Description

    General theme overrides. This styles will be merged with our base theme. Can override global styles like colors, fonts, etc. For more information, see Variables.

  • Name
    elements?
    Type
    Elements
    Description

    Fine-grained theme overrides. Useful when you want to style specific elements or elements that are under a specific state. For more information, see the Customize elements of a Clerk component section.

Using a prebuilt theme

Clerk offers a set of prebuilt themes that can be used to quickly style Clerk components. See the Themes docs for more information.

Customize the layout

The layout property is used to adjust the layout of Clerk's <SignIn/> and <SignUp/> components, as well as set important links to your support, terms, and privacy pages. See the Layout docs for more information.

Customize the base theme

The variables property is used to adjust the general styles of a component's base theme, like colors, backgrounds, and typography. See the Variables docs for more information.

Customize elements of a Clerk component

If you want full control over the appearance of a Clerk component, you can target the underlying elements by using their CSS classes and then apply your own styles.

First, you need to identify the underlying element of the Clerk component you want to style. You can do this by inspecting the HTML of the component.

For example, if you want to style the primary button in a Clerk component, you can right-click on the primary button and select "Inspect" from the menu. This will open the browser's developer tools and highlight the element in the HTML, as shown in the following image:

The inspect element tab opened with an element selected. It shows a list of classes and a lock icon in between human-readible classnames and randomly generated ones

When you select an element that is part of a Clerk component, you'll notice a list of classes like so:

cl-formButtonPrimary cl-button 🔒️ cl-internal-1ta0xpz

Any of the classes listed before the lock icon (🔒️) are safe to rely on, such as cl-formButtonPrimary or cl-button from the previous example. You'll use these classes to target the necessary elements of the Clerk component.

Note

Anything after the lock icon (🔒️) are internal classes used for Clerk's internal styling and should not be modified.

Once you have identified the classes of the element you want to target, there are many ways to apply your custom styles depending on your preference:

  1. Use global CSS styling
  2. Pass custom CSS classes
  3. Pass inline CSS to your Clerk options

Use global CSS to style Clerk components

You can style the elements of a Clerk component with global CSS.

For this example, say you want to style the primary button in a Clerk component. You inspect the primary button to find the classes that you can use to target the element:

cl-formButtonPrimary cl-button 🔒️ cl-internal-1ta0xpz

You can then create a global CSS file, use the classes you identified to target the primary button, and apply your custom styles. In this case, cl-formButtonPrimary is the class you want to use because it's specific to the primary button:

styles/global.css
.cl-formButtonPrimary {
  font-size: 14px;
  text-transform: none;
  background-color: #611bbd;
}

.cl-formButtonPrimary:hover,
.cl-formButtonPrimary:focus,
.cl-formButtonPrimary:active {
  background-color: #49247a;
}

Use custom CSS classes to style Clerk components

You can pass additional classes to Clerk component elements by using the elements property on the appearance prop.

For example, an element in a Clerk component will have classes that look something like this:

cl-formButtonPrimary cl-button 🔒️ cl-internal-1ta0xpz

Remove the cl- prefix from a class and use it as the key for a new object in the elements property. The value of this object should be the string of classes you want to apply to the element.

The following example shows how to style the primary button in a <SignIn /> component with custom CSS classes:

app/layout.tsx
import { ClerkProvider, SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs'

export default function RootLayout({ children }: { children: React.ReactNode }) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider>
      <html lang="en">
        <body>
          <SignIn
            appearance={{
              elements: {
                formButtonPrimary: 'your-org-button org-red-button',
              },
            }}
          />
        </body>
      </html>
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}
app.tsx
import { ClerkProvider, SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs'
import type { AppProps } from 'next/app'

function MyApp({ pageProps }: AppProps) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider {...pageProps}>
      <SignIn
        appearance={{
          elements: {
            formButtonPrimary: 'your-org-button org-red-button',
          },
        }}
      />
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}

export default MyApp

Use Tailwind classes to style Clerk components

You can style the elements of a Clerk component with Tailwind.

The following example shows how to style the primary button in a <SignIn /> component with Tailwind classes:

app/layout.tsx
import { ClerkProvider, SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs'

export default function RootLayout({ children }: { children: React.ReactNode }) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider>
      <html lang="en">
        <body>
          <SignIn
            appearance={{
              elements: {
                formButtonPrimary: 'bg-slate-500 hover:bg-slate-400 text-sm',
              },
            }}
          />
        </body>
      </html>
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}
app.tsx
import { ClerkProvider, SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs'
import type { AppProps } from 'next/app'

function MyApp({ pageProps }: AppProps) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider {...pageProps}>
      <SignIn
        appearance={{
          elements: {
            formButtonPrimary: 'bg-slate-500 hover:bg-slate-400 text-sm',
          },
        }}
      />
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}

export default MyApp

Use CSS modules to style Clerk components

CSS modules are a great way to scope your CSS to a specific component.

Create your module file and add the CSS you want to apply, as shown in the following example for the <SignIn /> component:

styles/SignIn.module.css
.primaryColor {
  background-color: bisque;
  color: black;
}

Then you can apply this by importing the file and using the classes whenever required:

app/layout.tsx
import styles from '../styles/SignIn.module.css'
import { ClerkProvider, SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs'

export default function RootLayout({ children }: { children: React.ReactNode }) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider>
      <html lang="en">
        <body>
          <SignIn
            appearance={{
              elements: {
                formButtonPrimary: styles.primaryColor,
              },
            }}
          />
        </body>
      </html>
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}
app.tsx
import styles from '../styles/SignIn.module.css'
import { ClerkProvider, SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs'
import type { AppProps } from 'next/app'

function MyApp({ pageProps }: AppProps) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider {...pageProps}>
      <SignIn
        appearance={{
          elements: {
            formButtonPrimary: styles.primaryColor,
          },
        }}
      />
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}

export default MyApp

Use inline CSS objects to style Clerk components

You can style the elements of a Clerk component with inline CSS objects.

The following example shows how to style the primary button in a <SignIn /> component with an inline CSS object:

app/layout.tsx
import styles from '../styles/SignIn.module.css'
import { ClerkProvider, SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs'

export default function RootLayout({ children }: { children: React.ReactNode }) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider>
      <html lang="en">
        <body>
          <SignIn
            appearance={{
              elements: {
                formButtonPrimary: {
                  fontSize: 14,
                  textTransform: 'none',
                  backgroundColor: '#611BBD',
                  '&:hover, &:focus, &:active': {
                    backgroundColor: '#49247A',
                  },
                },
              },
            }}
          />
        </body>
      </html>
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}
app.tsx
import { ClerkProvider, SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs'
import type { AppProps } from 'next/app'

function MyApp({ pageProps }: AppProps) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider {...pageProps}>
      <SignIn
        appearance={{
          elements: {
            formButtonPrimary: {
              fontSize: 14,
              textTransform: 'none',
              backgroundColor: '#611BBD',
              '&:hover, &:focus, &:active': {
                backgroundColor: '#49247A',
              },
            },
          },
        }}
      />
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}

export default MyApp

Next steps

Here are a few resources you can utilize to customize your Clerk components further:

Localization

Learn how to localize your Clerk components.

prebuilt themes

Explore Clerk's prebuilt themes that you can use to quickly style your Clerk components.

Customize layouts

Learn how to change the layout and links of your Clerk components.

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