Themes & modes

Every design has both a light and a dark mode. You pick one per conversion; the chosen mode swaps the root CSS variables and the syntax highlighting theme accordingly.

Table of contents

• Light mode
• Dark mode
• Prompted mode
• Accent override
• Fonts
• Page canvas

Light mode

The default (and the namesake of this site’s theme). Parchment canvas, warm ivory surfaces, terracotta accents, near-black text.

awesome-md-to-pdf docs --mode light

Dark mode

Near-black canvas, ivory text, coral accent. Tuned so code blocks and Mermaid diagrams stay legible without glowing.

awesome-md-to-pdf docs --mode dark

Prompted mode

If you omit --mode, the CLI prompts you:

? Render mode > (Use arrow keys)
  light -- Parchment canvas
  dark  -- Near Black canvas

Set MD_TO_PDF_MODE=light (or dark) to bypass the prompt in CI without having to add the flag everywhere.

Accent override

--accent <hex> replaces just the brand color in whichever mode is active. Useful when a design is otherwise perfect but the brand accent clashes with your document’s subject.

awesome-md-to-pdf docs --design-light designs/linear-light.md --design-dark designs/linear-dark.md --mode dark --accent "#a855f7"

Accents re-tint links, list bullets, active chips, and the focus ring. Headings and body text stay in the design’s own colors.

Fonts

All three stacks (serif, sans, mono) come from the active design. If a named font isn’t installed on the system Chromium uses the cascading fallback automatically – typically Georgia / system-ui / JetBrains Mono.

See Troubleshooting -> Fonts look different if you need to bundle custom fonts.

Page canvas

All modes render full-bleed by default: the canvas extends to every page edge with typographic margins inside the content (22 mm / 20 mm / 24 mm / 20 mm on A4).

Enabling --page-numbers, --header, or --footer reserves a band at the page edge and breaks full-bleed. Combine those with a different --format if you need US-Letter compliance for print shops.