Tangerine UI for Mastodon

Tangerine UI is a vibrant custom theme for Mastodon's web UI, available in four variants: 🍊🪻🍒🐠

The project was discontinued on June 30, 2026.

Tangerine UI: https://github.com/nileane/TangerineUI-for-Mastodon
Support this project: https://ko-fi.com/nileane
Developed by Niléane: https://nileane.fr/@nileane

Last Notes

2026-06-19 11:50:26 UTC

[Announcement] It’s time to say goodbye to Tangerine UI 🧡
Almost three years ago exactly today, I started working on Tangerine UI with the goal of creating a full custom theme for Mastodon’s Web UI, with a fun color scheme, multiple variants, cute icons and animations, and visual features that did not exist in other alternatives. The project immediately became incredibly successful: hundreds of stars on GitHub, with at least 50+ Mastodon instances that decided to offer the theme to their 40,000+ cumulated users (including several institutional instances!).
Tangerine UI was very ambitious in regard to how crudely it actually works (overriding Mastodon's CSS). And I feel like I was successfully able to push the limits of what's possible with this constraint. But maintaining it is sadly no longer sustainable for me. Which is why the time has come for me to announce that Tangerine UI will reach its end of life at the end of this month, June 2026:
• Tangerine UI is no longer being maintained, effectively immediately.
• The repository will be frozen and archived (made read-only) on June 30th.
• Current open issues and PRs will not be addressed, and the last supported release of Mastodon will remain Mastodon 4.5.x
• Mastodon 4.6 and future releases of Mastodon will not be supported and will break the theme.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a ton of fun creating the theme and its four variants. But as soon as Tangerine UI had come to a point I had considered finished, it immediately became genuinely depressing to have to spend many hours of my spare time on it every time a new major version of Mastodon was released — all just to un-break it and bring it up to speed, and without the fun felt on evolving the project and adding new features. With my motivation declining, my energy spent on other side projects (some of which I’d actually get paid for), and the fact that even I stopped using my own theme day-to-day in favor of other Mastodon clients, it feels like now is the right time to let it go.
That being said, I’ve been feeling very confident in the direction that the Mastodon team has been heading in lately. With a new system of design tokens in place (https://docs.joinmastodon.org/dev/frontend/design-tokens/), the Mastodon team has actually made it easier to customize the look of the Web UI. Even if it probably means that the way forward for custom Mastodon themes is more basic changes, with a focus on color first and foremost, I still think making sure future custom themes are less likely to break over time and require less maintenance is a good approach, and I’m glad they’re taking it.
And the reality is that I’m no longer feeling as dissatisfied with the default theme as I used to be in 2023 when I got started on Tangerine UI. Even if the default look of Mastodon is still too sterile to my liking, and not merely as fun and colorful as it should be, I’m kinda hopeful that maybe that's going to change sooner rather than later (crossing fingers).
If you are wondering what I’ve been using if not Tangerine UI: my answer is [@phanpy](https://hachyderm.io/@phanpy ) (https://phanpy.social), Phanpy all the way! Phanpy has always been a massive source of visual inspiration for Tangerine UI, because it’s fun, opinionated, and designed with care. But also, it’s just a fantastic (and powerful) client honestly. If you loved Tangerine UI, you should check out Phanpy.
So there we are, thank you everyone for loving Tangerine UI.
It’s awesome when you get to create and maintain a lil’ thing on the Internet that actual humans genuinely like and want to share to their friends. I hope I’ll get to do that again in the future.
— @npub15m6…mp9u
https://cdn.nileane.fr/media_attachments/files/116/776/635/210/933/771/original/041e9733c49b34c7.png

2025-11-07 00:56:42 UTC

- reply

#TangerineUI v2.5.1 is out now (already, I know), with just a teeny tiny 🤏 handful of visual fixes. But most importantly, the release brings an updated version of the included installation script:
• The script now automatically handles adding localized names for each variant of Tangerine UI.
• The script now defaults to the latest release tag instead of the main branch.
- This will ensure that you're always installing the latest stable release of Tangerine UI and not accidentally pulling from my untested commits pushed to the main branch at 2am.
- However, you can still run the script with the --main flag to install from the main branch if that's your jam.
More on Tangerine UI v2.5.1 and the updated installation script here: https://github.com/nileane/TangerineUI-for-Mastodon/releases/tag/v2.5.1
The installation instructions have been updated accordingly in the README document: https://github.com/nileane/TangerineUI-for-Mastodon?tab=readme-ov-file#installation-for-mastodon-admins

2025-11-06 14:45:34 UTC

- reply

RE: https://nileane.fr/@nileane/115244166318017290
If you value my work and enjoy the theme, and you want to help keep the project going, I would greatly appreciate your support over on my Ko-fi 🫶 https://ko-fi.com/nileane
Many thanks to everyone who has already tipped over the past few months 🙌
#note1ca8…6c33

2025-11-06 13:44:28 UTC

- reply

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/115503016101266241
⚠️ If you have installed Tangerine UI on your Mastodon instance and are planning to update, I strongly recommend updating the theme to v2.5 to avoid any UI issues :)
#note12d9…q5uz

2025-11-06 13:40:02 UTC

#TangerineUI v2.5 is out!
This new version brings the theme up to date with Mastodon 4.5, with support for all the new features included in the release, including the ability to author Quote Posts, and a bunch of additional visual improvements!
To install, follow the instructions in the README document as usual: https://github.com/nileane/TangerineUI-for-Mastodon?tab=readme-ov-file#installation-for-mastodon-admins
• More on Tangerine UI v2.5 here: https://github.com/nileane/TangerineUI-for-Mastodon/releases/tag/v2.5
• More on Mastodon 4.5 here: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/11/mastodon-4.5/
https://cdn.nileane.fr/media_attachments/files/115/503/032/008/662/041/original/8009f99b62a3018a.png

2025-06-04 14:54:05 UTC

PSA: Admins upgrading to the Mastodon 4.4.0 beta 1, beware; Tangerine UI may still be broken around some of the new features and also around Mastodon’s new UI and layout changes.
I'll release Tangerine UI v2.4 by the time Mastodon 4.4.0 is officially out, with proper support for all the changes. :)
https://mastodon.social/@MastodonEngineering/114625074809479231

2024-10-08 14:04:42 UTC

#TangerineUI v2.0 is now officially out!
This is a huge release, and it is the result of *months* of work. Tangerine UI has been redesigned from the ground up, and features a brand-new look.
Not only that, but Tangerine UI v2.0 now also comes in four variants (Tangerine 🍊, Purple 🪻, Cherry 🍒, and Lagoon 🐠), it fully supports the multicolumn layout, + many new features
Tangerine UI v2.0 can be installed on any Mastodon instance that has been upgraded to Mastodon v4.3.0
https://github.com/nileane/TangerineUI-for-Mastodon/releases/tag/v2.0
https://cdn.nileane.fr/media_attachments/files/113/272/177/169/304/018/original/1f5269a2cbdc5fd9.png
https://cdn.nileane.fr/media_attachments/files/113/272/177/617/594/504/original/01cf0e0f0cecb2f1.png
https://cdn.nileane.fr/media_attachments/files/113/272/178/070/876/687/original/053d091db3868cd6.png
https://cdn.nileane.fr/media_attachments/files/113/272/178/452/186/186/original/eac2e689c8890ebd.png