kBenestad theme for Forgejo

The kBenestad design language as a Forgejo theme — Nordic-minimal, light-first, one calm blue accent. Ships in light, dark, and auto (follows the visitor's OS preference).

File	Theme name	Notes
`theme-kbenestad-light.css`	`kbenestad-light`	cool paper ground, slate ink
`theme-kbenestad-dark.css`	`kbenestad-dark`	deep slate, brightened blue
`theme-kbenestad-auto.css`	`kbenestad-auto`	light by day, dark by night

How it works

Each theme defines a complete, self-contained kBenestad variable set — every --color-*, the type stack, and the corner radii — then layers a small set of structural overrides that carry the identity the colors alone can't: Schibsted Grotesk / JetBrains Mono type, accent-soft topic pills, flat primary buttons, and hairline 8px cards. It also @imports Forgejo's matching shipped theme as a harmless safety net (it fills any future upstream variables if present, and is silently ignored if absent), so the theme keeps working across upgrades.

Matching the kBenestad mark

The brand direction is Stack. Final SVGs live in the design system under assets/logo/. To dress Forgejo:

Forgejo path	Use this file
`custom/public/img/logo.svg`	`mark-stack-color.svg` (or `app-icon.svg` for a tiled mark)
`custom/public/img/favicon.svg`	`favicon.svg`

No restart needed — hard refresh. For the reversed navbar on the dark theme the mark already inherits currentColor where possible; if you want a fixed reverse, use mark-stack-white.svg.

Install

Copy the .css files into your custom assets CSS directory:
```
<FORGEJO_CUSTOM>/public/assets/css/
```
On most installs FORGEJO_CUSTOM is /data/gitea (Docker) or the custom/ folder beside your app.ini. The files must sit next to the shipped theme-forgejo-*.css so the relative @imports resolve.

[ui]
THEMES = forgejo-auto,forgejo-light,forgejo-dark,kbenestad-auto,kbenestad-light,kbenestad-dark
DEFAULT_THEME = kbenestad-auto

Or via environment variables (Docker):

FORGEJO__ui__THEMES=forgejo-auto,forgejo-light,forgejo-dark,kbenestad-auto,kbenestad-light,kbenestad-dark
FORGEJO__ui__DEFAULT_THEME=kbenestad-auto

A hard refresh is enough — no restart needed for CSS changes. Users can also pick the theme per-account under Settings → Appearance.

Fonts

The themes load Schibsted Grotesk and JetBrains Mono from Google Fonts via @import at the top of each file, and force the families directly so they apply the instant the fonts are available.

If the type still looks like the system font

This means the web font never loaded — the colors and layout will look right, but text falls back to your OS sans-serif. The @import from fonts.googleapis.com is being blocked. Common causes:

A privacy / tracker blocker in the browser (Vivaldi's built-in blocker, uBlock, Privacy Badger, etc.) blocks Google Fonts domains.
A reverse-proxy or [security] Content-Security-Policy that disallows external styles/fonts.
The instance is offline / air-gapped.

Fix — self-host the fonts (recommended, bulletproof):

Download the woff2 files:
- Schibsted Grotesk (400/500/600/700) — https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Schibsted+Grotesk
- JetBrains Mono (400/500/600) — https://fonts.google.com/specimen/JetBrains+Mono
Drop them in custom/public/assets/fonts/.

Delete the @import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/…') line at the top of each kBenestad theme file and paste a local block in its place, e.g.:

@font-face {
  font-family: "Schibsted Grotesk";
  font-weight: 400 800;
  font-display: swap;
  src: url("/assets/fonts/SchibstedGrotesk.woff2") format("woff2");
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "JetBrains Mono";
  font-weight: 400 600;
  font-display: swap;
  src: url("/assets/fonts/JetBrainsMono.woff2") format("woff2");
}

(Adjust filenames to the files you downloaded. /assets/fonts/… is served directly by Forgejo from custom/public/assets/fonts/.)

The --fonts-proportional / --fonts-monospace variables already point at the right family names, so no other change is needed.

Troubleshooting — "the theme deployed but it still looks stock"

Forgejo's compiled index.css is the raw Fomantic/Semantic-UI base, which hardcodes legacy colours (.ui.primary.button{background:#2185d0}, .ui.button{background:#e0e1e2}, .ui.label…). Your --color-* variables only take effect once the theme stylesheet that re-points those components onto the variables is the one actually loaded. If the page still looks like default Forgejo, work down this list:

Stale cache (most common). Forgejo serves files in custom/public/assets/css/ with a 6-hour browser cache and no ?v= buster (unlike the versioned index.css?v=9.0.3~gitea-1.22.0). After editing a theme file, the browser keeps the old copy. Fix: hard-refresh (Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-R), or bump STATIC_CACHE_TIME down while iterating, or append a throwaway query when testing. A server restart does not clear the browser's copy.
Theme not selected. Confirm DEFAULT_THEME = kbenestad-light (or -auto) in [ui], and that your account isn't pinned to another theme under Settings → Appearance. A per-user choice overrides the default.
Quick sanity check. Open dev-tools → inspect <body> → Computed → --color-primary. It must read #2f6fed (ours), not #4183c4/#2185d0 (stock). If it's the stock value, the kBenestad file isn't winning the cascade — that's cause 1 or 2, not the CSS itself.
Right file path. The .css must sit in custom/public/assets/css/ so it's served at /assets/css/theme-kbenestad-light.css and the relative @import "./theme-forgejo-light.css" resolves next to it.

What the theme recolours (and what it can't)

Pulled onto the brand: primary/positive buttons, repo-header owner/name, repo tabs (active label + accent underline) and their count pills, topic chips, dropdown/pagination active states, form-focus rings, checkboxes/toggles and progress bars. Language bars (the Go/Shell/HTML stripe on the repo home) are not themeable — Forgejo emits those segment colours as inline styles from its per-language colour table, so they stay their canonical hues by design.

Tweaking the accent

The entire accent ramp derives from the Nordic blue #2f6fed. To shift it, edit the --color-primary* block (and the matching rgba(47, 111, 237, …) alpha values) in each theme file.

Compatibility

Built against the modern Forgejo CSS-variable theming system (Forgejo v7.0+). Gitea compatibility is likely but untested.

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