Configuration
Guide to all available configuration settings.
Introduction
Project settings are configured by default using a YAML configuration file in
the project directory named mkdocs.yml
. You can specify another path for it
by using the -f
/--config-file
option (see mkdocs build --help
).
As a minimum, this configuration file must contain the site_name
. All other settings are optional.
Project information
site_name
This is a required setting, and should be a string that is used as the main title for the project documentation. For example:
site_name: Marshmallow Generator
When rendering the theme this setting will be passed as the site_name
context
variable.
site_url
Set the canonical URL of the site. This will add a link
tag with the
canonical
URL to the head
section of each HTML page. If the 'root' of the
MkDocs site will be within a subdirectory of a domain, be sure to include that
subdirectory in the setting (https://example.com/foo/
).
This setting is also used for mkdocs serve
: the server will be mounted onto a
path taken from the path component of the URL, e.g. some/page.md
will be
served from http://127.0.0.1:8000/foo/some/page/
to mimic the expected remote
layout.
default: null
repo_url
When set, provides a link to your repository (GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, ...) on each page.
repo_url: https://github.com/example/repository/
default: null
repo_name
When set, provides the name for the link to your repository on each page.
default: 'GitHub'
, 'Bitbucket'
or 'GitLab'
if the repo_url
matches
those domains, otherwise the hostname from the repo_url
.
edit_uri
The path from the base repo_url
to the docs directory when directly viewing a
page, accounting for specifics of the repository host (e.g. GitHub, Bitbucket,
etc), the branch, and the docs directory itself. MkDocs concatenates repo_url
and edit_uri
, and appends the input path of the page.
When set, and if your theme supports it, provides a link directly to the page in
your source repository. This makes it easier to find and edit the source for the
page. If repo_url
is not set, this option is ignored. On some themes, setting
this option may cause an edit link to be used in place of a repository link.
Other themes may show both links.
The edit_uri
supports query ('?') and fragment ('#') characters. For
repository hosts that use a query or a fragment to access the files, the
edit_uri
might be set as follows. (Note the ?
and #
in the URI...)
# Query string example
edit_uri: '?query=root/path/docs/'
# Hash fragment example
edit_uri: '#root/path/docs/'
For other repository hosts, simply specify the relative path to the docs directory.
# Query string example
edit_uri: root/path/docs/
For example, having this config:
repo_url: https://example.com/project/repo
edit_uri: blob/main/docs/
means that a page named 'foo/bar.md' will have its edit link lead to:
https://example.com/project/repo/blob/main/docs/foo/bar.md
edit_uri
can actually be just an absolute URL, not necessarily relative to repo_url
, so this can achieve the same result:
edit_uri: https://example.com/project/repo/blob/main/docs/
For more flexibility, see edit_uri_template below.
Note
On a few known hosts (specifically GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab), the
edit_uri
is derived from the 'repo_url' and does not need to be set
manually. Simply defining a repo_url
will automatically populate the
edit_uri
configs setting.
For example, for a GitHub- or GitLab-hosted repository, the edit_uri
would be automatically set as edit/master/docs/
(Note the edit
path
and master
branch).
For a Bitbucket-hosted repository, the equivalent edit_uri
would be
automatically set as src/default/docs/
(note the src
path and default
branch).
To use a different URI than the default (for example a different branch),
simply set the edit_uri
to your desired string. If you do not want any
"edit URL link" displayed on your pages, then set edit_uri
to an empty
string to disable the automatic setting.
Warning
On GitHub and GitLab, the default "edit" path (edit/master/docs/
) opens
the page in the online editor. This functionality requires that the user
have and be logged in to a GitHub/GitLab account. Otherwise, the user will
be redirected to a login/signup page. Alternatively, use the "blob" path
(blob/master/docs/
) to open a read-only view, which supports anonymous
access.
default: edit/master/docs/
for GitHub and GitLab repos or
src/default/docs/
for a Bitbucket repo, if repo_url
matches those domains,
otherwise null
edit_uri_template
The more flexible variant of edit_uri. These two are equivalent:
edit_uri: 'blob/main/docs/'
edit_uri_template: 'blob/main/docs/{path}'
(they are also mutually exclusive -- don't specify both).
Starting from here, you can change the positioning or formatting of the path, in case the default behavior of appending the path isn't enough.
The contents of edit_uri_template
are normal Python format strings, with only these fields available:
{path}
, e.g.foo/bar.md
{path_noext}
, e.g.foo/bar
And the conversion flag !q
is available, to percent-encode the field:
{path!q}
, e.g.foo%2Fbar.md
Suggested useful configurations:
-
GitHub Wiki:
(e.g.https://github.com/project/repo/wiki/foo/bar/_edit
)repo_url: 'https://github.com/project/repo/wiki' edit_uri_template: '{path_noext}/_edit'
-
BitBucket editor:
(e.g.https://bitbucket.org/project/repo/src/master/docs/foo/bar.md?mode=edit
)repo_url: 'https://bitbucket.org/project/repo/' edit_uri_template: 'src/master/docs/{path}?mode=edit'
-
GitLab Static Site Editor:
(e.g.https://gitlab.com/project/repo/-/sse/master/docs%2Ffoo%2bar.md
)repo_url: 'https://gitlab.com/project/repo' edit_uri_template: '-/sse/master/docs%2F{path!q}'
-
GitLab Web IDE:
(e.g.https://gitlab.com/-/ide/project/repo/edit/master/-/docs/foo/bar.md
)edit_uri_template: 'https://gitlab.com/-/ide/project/repo/edit/master/-/docs/{path}'
default: null
site_description
Set the site description. This will add a meta tag to the generated HTML header.
default: null
site_author
Set the name of the author. This will add a meta tag to the generated HTML header.
default: null
copyright
Set the copyright information to be included in the documentation by the theme.
default: null
remote_branch
Set the remote branch to commit to when using gh-deploy
to deploy to GitHub
Pages. This option can be overridden by a command line option in gh-deploy
.
default: gh-pages
remote_name
Set the remote name to push to when using gh-deploy
to deploy to GitHub Pages.
This option can be overridden by a command line option in gh-deploy
.
default: origin
Documentation layout
nav
This setting is used to determine the format and layout of the global navigation for the site. A minimal navigation configuration could look like this:
nav:
- 'index.md'
- 'about.md'
All paths in the navigation configuration must be relative to the
docs_dir
configuration option. See the section on configuring
pages and navigation for a more detailed breakdown, including how to create
sub-sections.
Navigation items may also include links to external sites. While titles are optional for internal links, they are required for external links. An external link may be a full URL or a relative URL. Any path which is not found in the files is assumed to be an external link. See the section about [Meta-Data] on how MkDocs determines the page title of a document.
nav:
- Introduction: 'index.md'
- 'about.md'
- 'Issue Tracker': 'https://example.com/'
In the above example, the first two items point to local files while the third points to an external site.
However, sometimes the MkDocs site is hosted in a subdirectory of a project's site and you may want to link to other parts of the same site without including the full domain. In that case, you may use an appropriate relative URL.
site_url: https://example.com/foo/
nav:
- Home: '../'
- 'User Guide': 'user-guide.md'
- 'Bug Tracker': '/bugs/'
In the above example, two different styles of external links are used. First,
note that the site_url
indicates that the MkDocs site is hosted in the /foo/
subdirectory of the domain. Therefore, the Home
navigation item is a relative
link that steps up one level to the server root and effectively points to
https://example.com/
. The Bug Tracker
item uses an absolute path from the
server root and effectively points to https://example.com/bugs/
. Of course, the
User Guide
points to a local MkDocs page.
default: By default nav
will contain an alphanumerically sorted, nested
list of all the Markdown files found within the docs_dir
and its
sub-directories. Index files will always be listed first within a sub-section.
Build directories
theme
Sets the theme and theme specific configuration of your documentation site. May be either a string or a set of key/value pairs.
If a string, it must be the string name of a known installed theme. For a list of available themes visit Choosing Your Theme.
An example set of key/value pairs might look something like this:
theme:
name: mkdocs
locale: en
custom_dir: my_theme_customizations/
static_templates:
- sitemap.html
include_sidebar: false
If a set of key/value pairs, the following nested keys can be defined:
Block
name
The string name of a known installed theme. For a list of available themes visit Choosing Your Theme.
locale
A code representing the language of your site. See Localizing your theme for details.
custom_dir
A directory containing a custom theme. This can either be a relative directory, in which case it is resolved relative to the directory containing your configuration file or it can be an absolute directory path from the root of your local file system.
See Customizing Your Theme for details if you would like to tweak an existing theme.
See the Theme Developer Guide if you would like to build your own theme from the ground up.
static_templates
A list of templates to render as static pages. The templates must be located
in either the theme's template directory or in the custom_dir
defined in
the theme configuration.
(theme specific keywords)
Any additional keywords supported by the theme can also be defined. See the documentation for the theme you are using for details.
default: 'mkdocs'
docs_dir
The directory containing the documentation source markdown files. This can either be a relative directory, in which case it is resolved relative to the directory containing your configuration file, or it can be an absolute directory path from the root of your local file system.
default: 'docs'
site_dir
The directory where the output HTML and other files are created. This can either be a relative directory, in which case it is resolved relative to the directory containing your configuration file, or it can be an absolute directory path from the root of your local file system.
default: 'site'
Note
If you are using source code control you will normally want to ensure that
your build output files are not committed into the repository, and only
keep the source files under version control. For example, if using git
you might add the following line to your .gitignore
file:
site/
If you're using another source code control tool, you'll want to check its documentation on how to ignore specific directories.
extra_css
Set a list of CSS files in your docs_dir
to be included by the theme. For
example, the following example will include the extra.css file within the
css subdirectory in your docs_dir.
extra_css:
- css/extra.css
- css/second_extra.css
default: []
(an empty list).
extra_javascript
Set a list of JavaScript files in your docs_dir
to be included by the theme.
See the example in extra_css for usage.
default: []
(an empty list).
extra_templates
Set a list of templates in your docs_dir
to be built by MkDocs. To see more
about writing templates for MkDocs read the documentation about [custom themes]
and specifically the section about the [available variables] to
templates. See the example in extra_css for usage.
default: []
(an empty list).
extra
A set of key-value pairs, where the values can be any valid YAML construct, that will be passed to the template. This allows for great flexibility when creating custom themes.
For example, if you are using a theme that supports displaying the project version, you can pass it to the theme like this:
extra:
version: 1.0
default: By default extra
will be an empty key-value mapping.
Preview controls
Live Reloading
watch
Determines additional directories to watch when running mkdocs serve
.
Configuration is a YAML list.
watch:
- directory_a
- directory_b
Allows a custom default to be set without the need to pass it through the -w
/--watch
option every time the mkdocs serve
command is called.
Note
The paths provided via the configuration file are relative to the configuration file.
The paths provided via the -w
/--watch
CLI parameters are not.
use_directory_urls
This setting controls the style used for linking to pages within the documentation.
The following table demonstrates how the URLs used on the site differ when
setting use_directory_urls
to true
or false
.
Source file | use_directory_urls: true | use_directory_urls: false |
---|---|---|
index.md | / | /index.html |
api-guide.md | /api-guide/ | /api-guide.html |
about/license.md | /about/license/ | /about/license.html |
The default style of use_directory_urls: true
creates more user friendly URLs,
and is usually what you'll want to use.
The alternate style can be useful if you want your documentation to remain properly linked when opening pages directly from the file system, because it creates links that point directly to the target file rather than the target directory.
default: true
strict
Determines how warnings are handled. Set to true
to halt processing when a
warning is raised. Set to false
to print a warning and continue processing.
This is also available as a command line flag: --strict
.
default: false
dev_addr
Determines the address used when running mkdocs serve
. Must be of the format
IP:PORT
.
Allows a custom default to be set without the need to pass it through the
--dev-addr
option every time the mkdocs serve
command is called.
default: '127.0.0.1:8000'
See also: site_url.
Formatting options
markdown_extensions
MkDocs uses the Python Markdown library to translate Markdown files
into HTML. Python Markdown supports a variety of extensions
that customize how pages are formatted. This setting lets you enable a list of
extensions beyond the ones that MkDocs uses by default (meta
, toc
, tables
,
and fenced_code
).
For example, to enable the SmartyPants typography extension, use:
markdown_extensions:
- smarty
Some extensions provide configuration options of their own. If you would like to
set any configuration options, then you can nest a key/value mapping
(option_name: option value
) of any options that a given extension supports.
See the documentation for the extension you are using to determine what options
they support.
For example, to enable permalinks in the (included) toc
extension, use:
markdown_extensions:
- toc:
permalink: True
Note that a colon (:
) must follow the extension name (toc
) and then on a new
line the option name and value must be indented and separated by a colon. If you
would like to define multiple options for a single extension, each option must be
defined on a separate line:
markdown_extensions:
- toc:
permalink: True
separator: "_"
Add an additional item to the list for each extension. If you have no configuration options to set for a specific extension, then simply omit options for that extension:
markdown_extensions:
- smarty
- toc:
permalink: True
- sane_lists
In the above examples, each extension is a list item (starts with a -
). As an
alternative, key/value pairs can be used instead. However, in that case an empty
value must be provided for extensions for which no options are defined.
Therefore, the last example above could also be defined as follows:
markdown_extensions:
smarty: {}
toc:
permalink: True
sane_lists: {}
This alternative syntax is required if you intend to override some options via inheritance.
See Also:
The Python-Markdown documentation provides a list of extensions which are available out-of-the-box. For a list of configuration options available for a given extension, see the documentation for that extension.
You may also install and use various third party extensions (Python-Markdown wiki, Best-of-MkDocs). Consult the documentation provided by those extensions for installation instructions and available configuration options.
default: []
(an empty list).
hooks
New in version 1.4
A list of paths to Python scripts (relative to mkdocs.yml
) that are loaded and used as plugin instances.
For example:
hooks:
- my_hooks.py
Then the file my_hooks.py can contain any plugin event handlers (without self
), e.g.:
def on_page_markdown(markdown, **kwargs):
return markdown.replace('a', 'z')
Advanced example:
This produces warnings based on the Markdown content (and warnings are fatal in strict mode):
import logging, re
import mkdocs.plugins
log = logging.getLogger('mkdocs')
@mkdocs.plugins.event_priority(-50)
def on_page_markdown(markdown, page, **kwargs):
path = page.file.src_uri
for m in re.finditer(r'\bhttp://[^) ]+', markdown):
log.warning(f"Documentation file '{path}' contains a non-HTTPS link: {m[0]}")
This does not enable any new abilities compared to plugins, it only simplifies one-off usages, as these don't need to be installed like plugins do.
Note that for mkdocs serve
the hook module will not be reloaded on each build.
You might have seen this feature in the mkdocs-simple-hooks plugin. If using standard method names, it can be directly replaced, e.g.:
-plugins:
- - mkdocs-simple-hooks:
- hooks:
- on_page_markdown: 'my_hooks:on_page_markdown'
+hooks:
+ - my_hooks.py
plugins
A list of plugins (with optional configuration settings) to use when building the site. See the Plugins documentation for full details.
If the plugins
config setting is defined in the mkdocs.yml
config file, then
any defaults (such as search
) are ignored and you need to explicitly re-enable
the defaults if you would like to continue using them:
plugins:
- search
- your_other_plugin
To define options for a given plugin, use a nested set of key/value pairs:
plugins:
- search
- your_other_plugin:
option1: value
option2: other value
In the above examples, each plugin is a list item (starts with a -
). As an
alternative, key/value pairs can be used instead. However, in that case an empty
value must be provided for plugins for which no options are defined. Therefore,
the last example above could also be defined as follows:
plugins:
search: {}
your_other_plugin:
option1: value
option2: other value
This alternative syntax is required if you intend to override some options via inheritance.
To completely disable all plugins, including any defaults, set the plugins
setting to an empty list:
plugins: []
default: ['search']
(the "search" plugin included with MkDocs).
Search
A search plugin is provided by default with MkDocs which uses lunr.js as a search engine. The following config options are available to alter the behavior of the search plugin:
separator
A regular expression which matches the characters used as word separators when
building the index. By default whitespace and the hyphen (-
) are used. To add
the dot (.
) as a word separator you might do this:
plugins:
- search:
separator: '[\s\-\.]+'
default: '[\s\-]+'
min_search_length
An integer value that defines the minimum length for a search query. By default searches shorter than 3 chars in length are ignored as search result quality with short search terms are poor. However, for some use cases (such as documentation about Message Queues which might generate searches for 'MQ') it may be preferable to set a shorter limit.
plugins:
- search:
min_search_length: 2
default: 3
lang
A list of languages to use when building the search index as identified by their ISO 639-1 language codes. With Lunr Languages, the following languages are supported:
ar
: Arabicda
: Danishnl
: Dutchen
: Englishfi
: Finnishfr
: Frenchde
: Germanhu
: Hungarianit
: Italianja
: Japaneseno
: Norwegianpt
: Portuguesero
: Romanianru
: Russianes
: Spanishsv
: Swedishth
: Thaitr
: Turkishvi
: Vietnamese
You may contribute additional languages.
Warning
While search does support using multiple languages together, it is best not to add additional languages unless you really need them. Each additional language adds significant bandwidth requirements and uses more browser resources. Generally, it is best to keep each instance of MkDocs to a single language.
Note
Lunr Languages does not currently include support for Chinese or other Asian languages. However, some users have reported decent results using Japanese.
default: The value of theme.locale
if set, otherwise [en]
.
prebuild_index
Optionally generates a pre-built index of all pages, which provides some
performance improvements for larger sites. Before enabling, confirm that the
theme you are using explicitly supports using a prebuilt index (the builtin
themes do). Set to true
to enable.
Warning
This option requires that Node.js be installed and the command node
be
on the system path. If the call to node
fails for any reason, a warning
is issued and the build continues uninterrupted. You may use the --strict
flag when building to cause such a failure to raise an error instead.
Note
On smaller sites, using a pre-built index is not recommended as it creates a significant increase is bandwidth requirements with little to no noticeable improvement to your users. However, for larger sites (hundreds of pages), the bandwidth increase is relatively small and your users will notice a significant improvement in search performance.
default: False
indexing
Configures what strategy the search indexer will use when building the index for your pages. This property is particularly useful if your project is large in scale, and the index takes up an enormous amount of disk space.
plugins:
- search:
indexing: 'full'
Options
Option | Description |
---|---|
full |
Indexes the title, section headings, and full text of each page. |
sections |
Indexes the title and section headings of each page. |
titles |
Indexes only the title of each page. |
default: full
Environment Variables
In most cases, the value of a configuration option is set directly in the
configuration file. However, as an option, the value of a configuration option
may be set to the value of an environment variable using the !ENV
tag. For
example, to set the value of the site_name
option to the value of the
variable SITE_NAME
the YAML file may contain the following:
site_name: !ENV SITE_NAME
If the environment variable is not defined, then the configuration setting
would be assigned a null
(or None
in Python) value. A default value can be
defined as the last value in a list. Like this:
site_name: !ENV [SITE_NAME, 'My default site name']
Multiple fallback variables can be used as well. Note that the last value is not an environment variable, but must be a value to use as a default if none of the specified environment variables are defined.
site_name: !ENV [SITE_NAME, OTHER_NAME, 'My default site name']
Simple types defined within an environment variable such as string, bool, integer, float, datestamp and null are parsed as if they were defined directly in the YAML file, which means that the value will be converted to the appropriate type. However, complex types such as lists and key/value pairs cannot be defined within a single environment variable.
For more details, see the pyyaml_env_tag project.
Configuration Inheritance
Generally, a single file would hold the entire configuration for a site. However, some organizations may maintain multiple sites which all share a common configuration across them. Rather than maintaining separate configurations for each, the common configuration options can be defined in a parent configuration file which each site's primary configuration file inherits.
To define the parent for a configuration file, set the INHERIT
(all caps) key
to the path of the parent file. The path must be relative to the location of the
primary file.
For configuration options to be merged with a parent configuration, those
options must be defined as key/value pairs. Specifically, the
markdown_extensions and plugins options must use the alternative syntax
which does not use list items (lines which start with -
).
For example, suppose the common (parent) configuration is defined in base.yml
:
theme:
name: mkdocs
locale: en
highlightjs: true
markdown_extensions:
toc:
permalink: true
admonition: {}
Then, for the "foo" site, the primary configuration file would be defined at
foo/mkdocs.yml
:
INHERIT: ../base.yml
site_name: Foo Project
site_url: https://example.com/foo
When running mkdocs build
, the file at foo/mkdocs.yml
would be passed in as
the configuration file. MkDocs will then parse that file, retrieve and parse the
parent file base.yml
and deep merge the two. This would result in MkDocs
receiving the following merged configuration:
site_name: Foo Project
site_url: https://example.com/foo
theme:
name: mkdocs
locale: en
highlightjs: true
markdown_extensions:
toc:
permalink: true
admonition: {}
Deep merging allows you to add and/or override various values in your primary configuration file. For example, suppose for one site you wanted to add support for definition lists, use a different symbol for permalinks, and define a different separator. In that site's primary configuration file you could do:
INHERIT: ../base.yml
site_name: Bar Project
site_url: https://example.com/bar
markdown_extensions:
def_list: {}
toc:
permalink:
separator: "_"
In that case, the above configuration would be deep merged with base.yml
and
result in the following configuration:
site_name: Bar Project
site_url: https://example.com/bar
theme:
name: mkdocs
locale: en
highlightjs: true
markdown_extensions:
def_list: {}
toc:
permalink:
separator: "_"
admonition: {}
Notice that the admonition
extension was retained from the parent
configuration, the def_list
extension was added, the value of
toc.permalink
was replaced, and the value of toc.separator
was added.
You can replace or merge the value of any key. However, any non-key is always replaced. Therefore, you cannot append items to a list. You must redefine the entire list.
As the nav configuration is made up of nested lists, this means that you
cannot merge navigation items. Of course, you can replace the entire nav
configuration with a new one. However, it is generally expected that the entire
navigation would be defined in the primary configuration file for a project.
Warning
As a reminder, all path based configuration options must be relative to the primary configuration file and MkDocs does not alter the paths when merging. Therefore, defining paths in a parent file which is inherited by multiple different sites may not work as expected. It is generally best to define path based options in the primary configuration file only.