Interface customization

This sections documents the Forgejo interface customization that requires an intimate knowledge of the underlying codebase. The user interface customization documented and supported for Forgejo admins to use is found in the corresponding administrator guide section.

Customizing Forgejo is typically done using the CustomPath folder - by default this is the custom folder from the working directory (WorkPath), but may be different if your build has set this differently. This is the central place to override configuration settings, templates, etc. You can check the CustomPath using forgejo help. You can also find the path on the Configuration tab in the Site Administration page. You can override the CustomPath by setting either the FORGEJO_CUSTOM environment variable or by using the --custom-path option on the forgejo binary. (The option will override the environment variable.)

If Forgejo is deployed from binary, all default paths will be relative to the Forgejo binary.

Application settings can be found in file CustomConf which is by default, $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/conf/app.ini but may be different if your build has set this differently. Again forgejo help will allow you review this variable and you can override it using the --config option on the forgejo binary.

Note: Forgejo must perform a full restart to see configuration changes.

Serving custom public files

To make Forgejo serve custom public files (like pages and images), use the folder $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/public/ as the webroot. Symbolic links will be followed. At the moment, only the following files are served:

  • public/robots.txt
  • files in the public/.well-known/ folder
  • files in the public/assets/ folder

For example, a file image.png stored in $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/public/assets/, can be accessed with the url http://forgejo.example.com/assets/image.png.

To build a custom logo and/or favicon clone the Forgejo source repository, replace assets/logo.svg and/or assets/favicon.svg and run make generate-images. assets/favicon.svg is used for the favicon only. This will update below output files which you can then place in $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/public/assets/img on your server:

  • public/assets/img/logo.svg - Used for site icon, app icon
  • public/assets/img/logo.png - Used for Open Graph
  • public/assets/img/avatar_default.png - Used as the default avatar image
  • public/assets/img/apple-touch-icon.png - Used on iOS devices for bookmarks
  • public/assets/img/favicon.svg - Used for favicon
  • public/assets/img/favicon.png - Used as fallback for browsers that don’t support SVG favicons

Customizing Forgejo pages and resources

Forgejo’s executable contains all the resources required to run: templates, images, style-sheets and translations. Any of them can be overridden by placing a replacement in a matching path inside the custom directory. For example, to replace the default .gitignore provided for C++ repositories, we want to replace options/gitignore/C++. To do this, a replacement must be placed in $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/options/gitignore/C++.

Every single page of Forgejo can be changed. Dynamic content is generated using go templates, which can be modified by placing replacements below the $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/templates directory.

To obtain any embedded file (including templates), the forgejo embedded CLI can be used. Alternatively, they can be found in the templates directory of Forgejo source.

Be aware that any statement contained inside {{ and }} are Forgejo’s template syntax and should not be touched without fully understanding these components.

Forgejo regularly makes backward incompatible changes to its own templates, which makes templates very likely to break when upgrading Forgejo.

Before deploying your changes to production or upgrading a modified Forgejo instance, we urge that you test your custom modifications in a testing environment first.

Customizing startpage / homepage

Copy home.tmpl for your version of Forgejo from templates to $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/templates. Edit as you wish. Dont forget to restart your Forgejo to apply the changes.

If all you want is to add extra links to the top navigation bar or footer, or extra tabs to the repository view, you can put them in extra_links.tmpl (links added to the navbar), extra_links_footer.tmpl (links added to the left side of footer), and extra_tabs.tmpl inside your $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/templates/custom/ directory.

For instance, let’s say you are in Germany and must add the famously legally-required “Impressum”/about page, listing who is responsible for the site’s content: just place it under your “$FORGEJO_CUSTOM/public/assets/” directory (for instance $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/public/assets/impressum.html) and put a link to it in either $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/templates/custom/extra_links.tmpl or $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/templates/custom/extra_links_footer.tmpl.

To match the current style, the link should have the class name “item”, and you can use {{AppSubUrl}} to get the base URL: <a class="item" href="{{AppSubUrl}}/assets/impressum.html">Impressum</a>

You can add new tabs in the same way, putting them in extra_tabs.tmpl. The exact HTML needed to match the style of other tabs is in the file templates/repo/header.tmpl.

Other additions to the page

Apart from extra_links.tmpl and extra_tabs.tmpl, there are other useful templates you can put in your $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/templates/custom/ directory:

  • header.tmpl, just before the end of the <head> tag where you can add custom CSS files for instance.
  • body_outer_pre.tmpl, right after the start of <body>.
  • body_inner_pre.tmpl, before the top navigation bar, but already inside the main container <div class="full height">.
  • body_inner_post.tmpl, before the end of the main container.
  • body_outer_post.tmpl, before the bottom <footer> element.
  • footer.tmpl, right before the end of the <body> tag, a good place for additional JavaScript.

Using Forgejo variables

It’s possible to use various Forgejo variables in your custom templates.

First, temporarily enable development mode: in your app.ini change from RUN_MODE = prod to RUN_MODE = dev. Then add {{ $ | DumpVar }} to any of your templates, restart Forgejo and refresh that page; that will dump all available variables.

Find the data that you need, and use the corresponding variable; for example, if you need the name of the repository then you’d use {{.Repository.Name}}.

If you need to transform that data somehow, and aren’t familiar with Go, an easy workaround is to add the data to the DOM and add a small JavaScript script block to manipulate the data.

Customizing Forgejo mails

The $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/templates/mail folder allows changing the body of every mail of Forgejo. Templates to override can be found in the templates/mail directory of Forgejo source. Override by making a copy of the file under $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/templates/mail using a full path structure matching source.

Any statement contained inside {{ and }} are Forgejo’s template syntax and shouldn’t be touched without fully understanding these components.

Customizing gitignores, labels, licenses, locales, and readmes.

Place custom files in corresponding sub-folder under custom/options.

NOTE: The files should not have a file extension, e.g. Labels rather than Labels.txt

gitignores

To add custom .gitignore, add a file with existing .gitignore rules in it to $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/options/gitignore

Labels

Starting with Forgejo 1.19, you can add a file that follows the YAML label format to $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/options/label:

labels:
  - name: 'foo/bar' # name of the label that will appear in the dropdown
    exclusive: true # whether to use the exclusive namespace for scoped labels. scoped delimiter is /
    color: aabbcc # hex colour coding
    description: Some label # long description of label intent

The legacy file format can still be used following the format below, however we strongly recommend using the newer YAML format instead.

#hex-color label name ; label description

Licenses

To add a custom license, add a file with the license text to $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/options/license

Readmes

To add a custom Readme, add a markdown formatted file (without an .md extension) to $FORGEJO_CUSTOM/options/readme

NOTE: readme templates support variable expansion. currently there are {Name} (name of repository), {Description}, {CloneURL.SSH}, {CloneURL.HTTPS} and {OwnerName}

Reactions

To change reaction emoji’s you can set allowed reactions at app.ini

[ui]
REACTIONS = +1, -1, laugh, confused, heart, hooray, eyes

A full list of supported emoji’s is at emoji list

Customizing fonts

Fonts can be customized using CSS variables:

:root {
  --fonts-proportional:  /* custom proportional fonts * !important;
  --fonts-monospace:  /* custom monospace fonts * !important;
  --fonts-emoji:  /* custom emoji fonts * !important;
}
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