@nativescript/tailwind

Warning: :warning: For Tailwind CSS v3, @nativescript/[email protected] is required for colors to work properly. You may see wrong colors on older core versions, because Tailwind CSS v3 uses the RGB/A color notation, which has been implemented for 8.2.0. Tailwind CSS v4 uses Lightning CSS which handles this automatically.

Makes using Tailwind CSS in NativeScript a whole lot easier!

<label
  text="Tailwind CSS is awesome!"
  class="px-2 py-1 text-center text-blue-600 bg-blue-200 rounded-full"
/>

Usage

Note: This guide assumes you are using @nativescript/[email protected] or higher. If you have not upgraded yet, please read the docs below for usage with older @nativescript/webpack versions (applicable to Tailwind CSS v3).

Tailwind CSS v4

If you need to use Tailwind CSS v4, follow these steps. Tailwind CSS v4 support simplifies the setup significantly over v3.

Install dependencies:

npm install --save @nativescript/tailwind tailwindcss

Import Tailwind: Add the following to your app.css or app.scss:

@import 'tailwindcss';

Upgrading from Tailwind CSS 3

Update dependencies:

npm install --save tailwindcss@latest

Open your app.css or app.scss and replace any existing Tailwind imports with:

@import 'tailwindcss';

Tailwind CSS v3

If you need to use Tailwind CSS v3, follow these steps:

Install dependencies:

npm install --save @nativescript/tailwind tailwindcss

Generate tailwind.config.js:

npx tailwindcss init

Configure tailwind.config.js: When the NativeScript CLI creates a new project, it may put code into a src folder instead of the app referenced below. Adjust content, darkMode, corePlugins plus any other settings you need. Here are the values we recommend. If you're struggling to get Tailwind working for the first time, check the content setting.

// tailwind.config.js
const plugin = require('tailwindcss/plugin');

/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
module.exports = {
  // check this setting first for initial setup issues
  content: [
    './app/**/*.{css,xml,html,vue,svelte,ts,tsx}'
  ],
  // use the .ns-dark class to control dark mode (applied by NativeScript) - since 'media' (default) is not supported.
  darkMode: ['class', '.ns-dark'],
  theme: {
    extend: {},
  },
  plugins: [
    /**
     * A simple inline plugin that adds the ios: and android: variants
     * 
     * Example usage: 
     *
     *   <Label class="android:text-red-500 ios:text-blue-500" />
     *
     */
    plugin(function ({ addVariant }) {
      addVariant('android', '.ns-android &');
      addVariant('ios', '.ns-ios &');
    }),
  ],
  corePlugins: {
    preflight: false // disables browser-specific resets
  }
}

Include Tailwind directives: Change your app.css or app.scss to include the tailwind directives:

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Start using tailwind in your app.

Using a custom PostCSS config

Manual PostCSS configuration is typically not required for Tailwind CSS v4. @nativescript/tailwind handles the necessary setup automatically.

However, if you need to add other PostCSS plugins alongside Tailwind v4, create a postcss.config.js (or other supported formats, see https://github.com/webpack-contrib/postcss-loader#config-files) and include @nativescript/tailwind:

// postcss.config.js (Example for v4 with other plugins)

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    "@nativescript/tailwind", // Handles Tailwind v4 setup
    // Add other PostCSS plugins here
    "@csstools/postcss-is-pseudo-class" 
  ],
};

For Tailwind CSS v3, if you need to customize the postcss configuration (e.g., use a custom tailwind.config.custom.js), you can create a postcss.config.js file.

// postcss.config.js (Example for v3 customization)

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    ["tailwindcss", { config: "./tailwind.config.custom.js" }],
    "@nativescript/tailwind",
    // Add other PostCSS plugins here
    "@csstools/postcss-is-pseudo-class" 
  ],
};

Note (Tailwind CSS v3): If you want to apply customizations to tailwindcss or @nativescript/tailwind in v3 using a custom PostCSS config, you will need to disable autoloading:

ns config set tailwind.autoload false

Usage with older @nativescript/webpack versions

This usage is considered legacy and will not be supported - however we are documenting it here in case your project is still using older @nativescript/webpack. This applies to Tailwind CSS v3 setups.

npm install --save-dev @nativescript/tailwind tailwindcss postcss postcss-loader

Create postcss.config.js with the following:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
      require('tailwindcss'),
      require('nativescript-tailwind')
  ]
}

Generate a tailwind.config.js with

npx tailwindcss init

Adjust content, darkMode, corePlugins plus any other settings you need, here are the values we recommend:

// tailwind.config.js

module.exports = {
  content: [
    './app/**/*.{css,xml,html,vue,svelte,ts,tsx}'
  ],
  // use .dark to toggle dark mode - since 'media' (default) does not work in NativeScript
  darkMode: 'class',
  theme: {
    extend: {},
  },
  plugins: [],
  corePlugins: {
    preflight: false // disables browser-specific resets
  }
}

Change your app.css or app.scss to include the tailwind utilities

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Update webpack.config.js to use PostCSS

Find the section of the config that defines the rules/loaders for different file types. To quickly find this block - search for rules: [.

For every css/scss block, append the postcss-loader to the list of loaders, for example:

{
  test: /[\/|\\]app\.css$/,
  use: [
    'nativescript-dev-webpack/style-hot-loader',
    {
      loader: "nativescript-dev-webpack/css2json-loader",
      options: { useForImports: true }
    },
+   'postcss-loader',
  ],
}

Make sure you append postcss-loader to all css/scss rules in the config.