Web Development

A Guide to DaisyUI: The Tailwind CSS Plugin for Creating Beautiful and Customizable UI Components

DaisyUI is a powerful Tailwind CSS plugin that simplifies UI development by offering a collection of pre-built, fully customizable components. From buttons and forms to modals and navigation bars, DaisyUI combines Tailwind’s utility-first approach with beautifully designed elements.
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by Furkan OZTURK
Full-stack Developer
Published: Jan 7, 2025 13:49
Modified: Jan 8, 2025 05:31

User interfaces (UI) play a critical role in the overall experience. A visually appealing and functional interface not only attracts users but also enhances usability. Tailwind CSS has become one of the most popular CSS frameworks, thanks to its utility-first approach that allows developers to rapidly build customizable UIs. However, while Tailwind provides a lot of flexibility, developers often need pre-built components to speed up their workflow.

Enter DaisyUI, a Tailwind CSS plugin that offers a wide range of ready-made, customizable UI components. In this article, we’ll explore what DaisyUI is, how to install and use it, and why it has become a favorite tool for developers.

What is DaisyUI?

DaisyUI is a plugin for Tailwind CSS that adds a collection of customizable UI components to the utility-first framework. It provides a set of pre-designed, responsive components such as buttons, forms, cards, modals, navigation bars, and more. DaisyUI allows developers to quickly build sophisticated UIs without having to write extensive custom styles.

What makes DaisyUI stand out is its deep integration with Tailwind. It leverages the power of Tailwind’s utility classes while offering flexible configuration options for customizing components. Additionally, DaisyUI components come with built-in support for light and dark themes, enabling seamless transitions between color schemes with minimal setup.

Features of DaisyUI

Pre-Built Components: DaisyUI offers a vast selection of components that cater to common UI patterns. From forms and buttons to complex elements like modals and carousels, DaisyUI provides a variety of pre-styled elements.

Customizable: All DaisyUI components are highly customizable via Tailwind’s utility classes, making it easy to tweak the design according to your project’s needs.

Dark Mode Support: DaisyUI supports both light and dark themes out of the box. You can toggle themes easily, making your UI look great in both modes with minimal effort.

Accessibility Focused: DaisyUI places emphasis on creating components that are accessible. It adheres to good practices for color contrast, keyboard navigation, and screen reader support.

Responsive Design: All components are designed to be fully responsive, ensuring that your application works seamlessly on a variety of screen sizes and devices.

No Extra Dependencies: DaisyUI doesn’t require any JavaScript libraries or dependencies. It’s built on top of Tailwind CSS and works seamlessly with the existing framework.

1. Installing DaisyUI

To use DaisyUI, you first need to have Tailwind CSS set up in your project. If you don’t already have it installed, you can follow the official Tailwind CSS installation guide. Once you have Tailwind CSS in place, follow these simple steps to install DaisyUI:

Install DaisyUI via npm:

If you are using npm, you can install DaisyUI by running the following command in your terminal:

npm install daisyui

2. Add DaisyUI to the Tailwind configuration:

After installing the package, you need to include it in your Tailwind configuration file. Open your tailwind.config.js file and add DaisyUI to the plugins array:

module.exports = {
  content: [
    "./path/to/your/files/**/*.{html,js,jsx,ts,tsx}", // Adjust paths as needed
  ],
  plugins: [require("daisyui")],
};

3. Enable Dark Mode (Optional):

If you want to use the dark mode feature, you can enable it in your Tailwind configuration file. Tailwind supports two dark mode strategies: media (based on the user’s system preference) or class (where you manually toggle the dark mode). You can enable it as follows:

module.exports = {
  darkMode: 'class', // or 'media'
  plugins: [require("daisyui")],
};

4. Build your project:

After installing DaisyUI and configuring it, run your build process (e.g., npm run build or yarn build) to ensure everything is compiled correctly.

Using DaisyUI Components

Once you have DaisyUI installed, you can start using its components right away. The components are easy to use because they follow the same utility-first approach as Tailwind CSS. Here’s an example of how to create a button and a card component with DaisyUI.

Button Example:

<button class="btn btn-primary">Primary Button</button>
<button class="btn btn-secondary">Secondary Button</button>
<button class="btn btn-accent">Accent Button</button>

In the above example, the btn class provides the basic button style, while btn-primary, btn-secondary, and btn-accent define the different button colors and styles. These classes are customizable with Tailwind utilities, allowing you to adjust padding, border-radius, colors, and more.

Card Example:

<div class="card w-96 bg-base-100 shadow-xl">
  <figure><img src="https://via.placeholder.com/300" alt="Card image" /></figure>
  <div class="card-body">
    <h2 class="card-title">Card Title</h2>
    <p>Card content goes here. You can add anything you want inside the card body.</p>
    <div class="card-actions justify-end">
      <button class="btn btn-primary">Action</button>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

This example shows how to create a card with an image and a button. The card, card-body, and card-actions classes structure the content, while the btn-primary class applies the button style.

Customizing DaisyUI

DaisyUI allows you to customize components through Tailwind’s utility classes. However, you can also modify the default settings in DaisyUI by adjusting its configuration.

For example, to change the default theme, you can add a custom theme to the tailwind.config.js file:

module.exports = {
  daisyui: {
    themes: [
      {
        mytheme: {
          primary: "#4CAF50",
          secondary: "#FF5722",
          accent: "#FFC107",
        },
      },
    ],
  },
};

This will apply a custom theme across all components using DaisyUI’s built-in classes.

Why Choose DaisyUI?

DaisyUI has quickly become a popular choice for developers working with Tailwind CSS, and for good reason:

1. Speed and Efficiency: DaisyUI accelerates the development process by providing pre-built, customizable components that integrate seamlessly with Tailwind CSS.

2. Customization: With Tailwind’s utility classes, you have total control over the appearance and behavior of components, while DaisyUI offers sensible defaults.

3. No Need for External Libraries: DaisyUI eliminates the need to bring in bulky JavaScript or CSS libraries, keeping your project lightweight and easy to maintain.

4. Community Support: Since it’s built on top of Tailwind CSS, DaisyUI benefits from the robust Tailwind community, offering great documentation, tutorials, and active support.

Conclusion

DaisyUI is a powerful plugin that brings pre-designed, customizable components to the utility-first world of Tailwind CSS. Whether you’re building a personal project or a professional application, DaisyUI can help you create beautiful, functional UIs with minimal effort. By offering components that are highly customizable and compatible with Tailwind’s responsive and utility-driven design philosophy, DaisyUI simplifies the process of building user interfaces while giving you full control over the final look and feel. If you’re using Tailwind CSS in your project, DaisyUI is definitely worth a try.