Using the board
Appearance
Themes, custom themes in JSON, density and motion tokens, fonts, languages and notifications.
Themes
38 themes ship built in, including Vercel, Linear, Claude, Apple, Stripe, Catppuccin, Dracula, Nord, Terminal and Synthwave. Each comes in light, dark and auto — auto following your operating system.
Custom themes
A theme is a JSON object of design tokens, so you can define your own without touching the source:
{
"name": "My theme",
"colors": {
"bg": "#0c1d17",
"surface": "#142a22",
"border": "#1e372e",
"text": "#e8f0ea",
"textMuted": "#96a89e",
"accent": "#88e138"
}
}Paste it into Settings → Appearance → Custom theme. It is stored in .kandown/kandown.json, so it
travels with the project and lands in git with everything else.
Tokens
Beyond colour, the look is driven by four tokenised scales you can set independently:
| Token | Effect |
|---|---|
| Radius | Corner rounding across cards, inputs and panels |
| Shadows | Elevation, from flat to pronounced |
| Density | Vertical rhythm — compact fits considerably more on screen |
| Motion | Animation intensity, down to none |
Five font stacks are available, covering system UI, geometric sans and monospace-forward looks.
Note
Setting motion to none is also the right choice on a machine where the animated background costs
you frames. Kandown additionally honours the OS-level prefers-reduced-motion setting.
Animated background
An optional WebGL background renders behind the board. It is off by default on low-power settings and can be disabled entirely in Settings.
Languages
The interface is translated into 48 languages. English is the source of truth; every other locale is translated from it.
Missing or awkward wording in your language is a genuinely useful contribution — locale files are
plain JSON under src/lib/i18n/locales/. See Contributing.
Notifications
Browser notifications and sounds can be enabled per project, for due dates and board changes. Both are off until you turn them on, and neither leaves your machine.