Space customization

Customize a published GitBook Space.

Customize a Published GitBook Space

Customizing your space lets you control the branding, presentation and extra features of your space’s public content.

Most customization settings apply to your published content. This keeps your writing experience and in-app GitBook content consistent while allowing you to control the output to a degree.

General: control how your content looks

Inherit customizations

If the space you are customizing is within a collection, you’ll see this option:

When this setting is enabled, the space will automatically inherit any changes made to the customization settings for the parent collection. This is useful if you want to control multiple spaces’ customizations in one place, and removes the need to make the same change multiple times across spaces.

Basic (icon, title, logo)

Icon You can set an emoji, or upload an icon of your own. Please note that this setting will only affect the icon that displays in the published documentation and it’ll be used as the favicon for the page. (If you want to edit the icon used within the GitBook app, close the customize section and click on the icon at the top of the space.)

Title You can set any title you choose for your space. Again, please note that this setting will only affect the title that displays in the published documentation. (If you want to edit the title used within the GitBook app, close the customize section and click on the title at the top of the space.)

Logo You can replace both the space’s title and icon with a custom logo so that your documentation better reflects your own branding — and, you can upload two versions: one for light mode, and one for dark mode. Note: this setting is only available to spaces owned by an organization subscribed to a Pro or Enterprise plan.

If you’re wondering about the difference between the icon and logo options, here’s the answer! The icon allows you to upload a small, 132px square image, which will be displayed alongside your space title, whereas the custom logo allows you to upload a larger image (we recommend at least 600px wide), which will completely replace the icon and title settings.

Themes (with light & dark modes)

Themes enable you to customize the color scheme of your published content. Whichever theme you choose, you’ll have access to choose the primary color for light mode and for dark mode. While you can use any colors you’d like, it’s important to keep accessibility in mind and choose something that will have good contrast so that your content is easy to read.

Default theme All spaces have access to this theme, where the header background color will be aligned with the background color for the rest of the space.

Bold theme The bold theme uses the primary color as the header background color. It is only available to spaces owned by an organization subscribed to a Pro or Enterprise plan.

Contrast theme The contrast theme has a dark header background color in light mode, and a light header background color in dark mode. It is only available to spaces owned by an organization subscribed to a Pro or Enterprise plan.

Custom theme The custom theme option will enable you to set your own color preferences for the background color and link color in the header, in addition to choosing the primary color for light mode and for dark mode. It is only available to spaces owned by an organization subscribed to a Pro or Enterprise plan.\

Modes

Show mode toggle If you would like visitors to your published content to be able to toggle between light and dark mode, enable this setting! You can see it in action in our own documentation here. It’s located near the bottom-right corner, both on larger screens and mobile devices.

Default mode Choose whether visitors to your published content will see it in light mode or dark mode initially. If show mode toggle is enabled, they’ll be able to switch to the other option if they prefer. If show mode toggle is disabled, they’ll only be able to see your content in the mode you choose here.

Note: if, instead, you’re looking to change the theme within the GitBook app, you can do that from your settings menu, which can be found at the bottom of the sidebar.

Styling

Font family You can choose a font family for your published content from a list of popular options. This setting is only available to spaces owned by an organization subscribed to a Pro or Enterprise plan.

GitBook doesn’t support the uploading or linking of custom fonts. If you think we’re missing a typeface that works wonderfully for headers, body copy, and captions, let us know!

Corner style Choose either a rounded corner or straight corner style, to help align your published GitBook content with your own brand’s styling preferences.

Background Switch between a plain background and a subtly tinted background that complements your theme.

Layout: manage navigation options for your content

Header

Navigation Enable or disable header links for your space! You could use header links to link to important parts of your documentation, or perhaps to link back to your main website.

When enabled, all you’ll need to do is add a title and a URL for each link. We support two levels of header navigation, meaning that you can have sub-links that appear in a dropdown menu.

Page

Pagination Keep this setting on to have previous and next buttons appear at the bottom of each page in your space, or toggle it off if you prefer that your pages don’t include those buttons.

Footer

Enable or disable a footer section for your space! The footer is only available to spaces owned by an organization subscribed to a Pro or Enterprise plan.

Logo You might like to include your logo or another image in the footer. If you choose to upload one, we recommend a width of at least 600px.

Copyright text You can include some brief copyright text, if you’d like.

Navigation You can include links in your footer, in multiple sections. Just like with the header, you just need to add a title and URL for each link. Make sure to also include a section title for each section you create.

Sharing: customize social media preview

Social preview

You can upload a custom social preview image for your space. This will set the space’s og:image to be your uploaded image, and it’ll show when the space’s link is shared to any platform or product that supports OpenGraph images.

Configure: manage the interface

Localize user interface

You can select from a list of languages to localize the user interface of your published content. This will apply translations to the non-custom areas of the interface.

This setting will not auto-translate your actual content, but can help with matching the user interface to the language that you are writing in.

Is there a language we don’t yet offer that you would like to see included in this list? Let us know!

Enable Lens semantic search

Enabling Lens allows visitors to your published documentation to ask questions and receive a semantic answer based on your content.

You can find out more about Lens.

PDF Export

You can choose whether or not you’d like visitors to your published content to be able to download the content as a PDF file.

You can find out more about the PDF export feature.

PDF Export is only available to spaces owned by an organization subscribed to a Pro or Enterprise plan.

Page Rating

Choose whether or not visitors to your published content can leave a rating on each page to let you know how they feel about it. They’ll be able to choose a sad, neutral, or happy face.

You can review the results of this survey if you open the Insights page and select the Content scores tab.

Privacy Policy

You can link to your own privacy policy to help visitors understand how your GitBook content uses cookies, and how you protect their privacy. If you choose not to set one, GitBook’s own privacy policy will be used.

Integrations

You can choose to enable Intercom or Google Analytics integrations for your published content.

Looking for more? See integrations for more info.

What can’t be customized?

The options above provide lots of ways for you to customize your space, but there are a few things that you won’t be able to customize, regardless of your chosen plan.

1. It’s not possible to customize the layout of the elements on the page. (However, it is possible to hide certain elements on a page-by-page basis)

2. There’s no way to insert custom code (such as CSS, HTML, JS, etc.) directly into one or more documentation pages. (If you’re looking to integrate a third party service, take a look at the docs for our integrations platform)

3. It’s not possible to remove the small "Powered by GitBook" link that appears in published documentation.