Configuration Reference

Starlight is an integration built on top the Astro web framework. You can configure your project inside the astro.config.mjs configuration file:

// astro.config.mjs
import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config';
import starlight from '@astrojs/starlight';

export default defineConfig({
	integrations: [
		starlight({
			title: 'My delightful docs site',
		}),
	],
});

You can pass the following options to the starlight integration.

type: string | Record<string, string>

Set the title for your website. Will be used in metadata and in the browser tab title.

The value can be a string, or for multilingual sites, an object with values for each different locale. When using the object form, the keys must be BCP-47 tags (e.g. en, ar, or zh-CN):

starlight({
	title: {
		en: 'My delightful docs site',
		de: 'Meine bezaubernde Dokumentationsseite',
	},
});

type: string

Set the description for your website. Used in metadata shared with search engines in the <meta name="description"> tag if description is not set in a page’s frontmatter.

type: LogoConfig

Set a logo image to show in the navigation bar alongside or instead of the site title. You can either set a single src property or set separate image sources for light and dark.

starlight({
	logo: {
		src: './src/assets/my-logo.svg',
	},
});

type LogoConfig = { alt?: string; replacesTitle?: boolean } & (
	| { src: string }
	| { light: string; dark: string }
);

type: false | { minHeadingLevel?: number; maxHeadingLevel?: number }
default: { minHeadingLevel: 2, maxHeadingLevel: 3 }

Configure the table of contents shown on the right of each page. By default, <h2> and <h3> headings will be included in this table of contents.

type: { baseUrl: string }

Enable “Edit this page” links by setting the base URL these should use. The final link will be editLink.baseUrl + the current page path. For example, to enable editing pages in the withastro/starlight repo on GitHub:

starlight({
	editLink: {
		baseUrl: 'https://github.com/withastro/starlight/edit/main/',
	},
});

With this config, a /introduction page would have an edit link pointing to https://github.com/withastro/starlight/edit/main/src/content/docs/introduction.md.

type: SidebarItem[]

Configure your site’s sidebar navigation items.

A sidebar is an array of links, groups of links, and autogenerated entries. Sidebar items are defined using one of the following properties:

• link — a single link to a specific URL, e.g. '/home' or 'https://example.com'. A link must also have a label.

• slug — a reference to an internal page, e.g. 'guides/getting-started'. The linked page’s title will be used as the label by default.

• items — an array containing more sidebar links, subgroups, and autogenerated entries. A group must also have a label.

• autogenerate — an object specifying a directory of your docs to automatically generate links and subgroups for. Autogenerated entries can be placed in a group’s items array.

Internal links can also be specified as a string instead of an object with a slug property.

starlight({
	sidebar: [
		// A single link item labelled “Home”.
		{ label: 'Home', link: '/' },
		// A group labelled “Start Here” containing four links.
		{
			label: 'Start Here',
			items: [
				// Using `slug` for internal links.
				{ slug: 'intro' },
				{ slug: 'installation' },
				// Or using the shorthand for internal links.
				'tutorial',
				'next-steps',
			],
		},
		// A group linking to all pages in the reference directory.
		{
			label: 'Reference',
			items: [{ autogenerate: { directory: 'reference' } }],
		},
	],
});

Autogenerated sidebar groups are sorted by filename alphabetically. For example, a page generated from astro.md would appear above the page for starlight.md.

Groups of links are expanded by default. You can change this behavior by setting a group’s collapsed property to true.

Autogenerated subgroups are also expanded by default. Set the autogenerate.collapsed property to collapse them.

sidebar: [  // A collapsed group of links.  {    label: 'Collapsed Links',    collapsed: true,    items: ['intro', 'next-steps'],  },  // An expanded group containing collapsed autogenerated subgroups.  {    label: 'Reference',    items: [      {        autogenerate: {          directory: 'reference',          collapsed: true,        },      },    ],  },],

If your site is multilingual, each item’s label is considered to be in the default locale. You can set a translations property to provide labels for your other supported languages:

sidebar: [  // An example sidebar with labels translated to Brazilian Portuguese.  {    label: 'Start Here',    translations: { 'pt-BR': 'Comece Aqui' },    items: [      {        label: 'Getting Started',        translations: { 'pt-BR': 'Introdução' },        link: '/getting-started',      },      {        label: 'Project Structure',        translations: { 'pt-BR': 'Estrutura de Projetos' },        link: '/structure',      },    ],  },],

type SidebarItem =
	| string
	| ({
			translations?: Record<string, string>;
			badge?: string | BadgeConfig;
	  } & (
			| {
					// Link
					link: string;
					label: string;
					attrs?: Record<string, string | number | boolean | undefined>;
			  }
			| {
					// Internal link
					slug: string;
					label?: string;
					attrs?: Record<string, string | number | boolean | undefined>;
			  }
			| {
					// Group of links
					label: string;
					items: SidebarItem[];
					collapsed?: boolean;
			  }
	  ))
	| {
			// Autogenerated links and subgroups
			autogenerate: {
				directory: string;
				collapsed?: boolean;
				attrs?: Record<string, string | number | boolean | undefined>;
			};
	  };

interface BadgeConfig {
	text: string;
	variant?: 'note' | 'tip' | 'caution' | 'danger' | 'success' | 'default';
	class?: string;
}

type: \{ \[dir: string\]: [LocaleConfig](#localeconfig) \}

Configure internationalization (i18n) for your site by setting which locales are supported.

Each entry should use the directory where that language’s files are saved as the key.

import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config';
import starlight from '@astrojs/starlight';

export default defineConfig({
	integrations: [
		starlight({
			title: 'My Site',
			// Set English as the default language for this site.
			defaultLocale: 'en',
			locales: {
				// English docs in `src/content/docs/en/`
				en: {
					label: 'English',
				},
				// Simplified Chinese docs in `src/content/docs/zh-cn/`
				'zh-cn': {
					label: '简体中文',
					lang: 'zh-CN',
				},
				// Arabic docs in `src/content/docs/ar/`
				ar: {
					label: 'العربية',
					dir: 'rtl',
				},
			},
		}),
	],
});

interface LocaleConfig {
	label: string;
	lang?: string;
	dir?: 'ltr' | 'rtl';
}

You can set the following options for each locale:

type: string

The label for this language to show to users, for example in the language switcher. Most often you will want this to be the language’s name as a user of that language would expect to read it, e.g. "English", "العربية", or "简体中文".

type: string

The BCP-47 tag for this language, e.g. "en", "ar", or "zh-CN". If not set, the language’s directory name will be used by default. Language tags with regional subtags (e.g. "pt-BR" or "en-US") will use built-in UI translations for their base language if no region-specific translations are found.

type: 'ltr' | 'rtl'

The writing direction of this language; "ltr" for left-to-right (the default) or "rtl" for right-to-left.

You can serve the default language without a /lang/ directory by setting a root locale:

starlight({	locales: {		root: {			label: 'English',			lang: 'en',		},		fr: {			label: 'Français',		},	},});

For example, this allows you to serve /getting-started/ as an English route and use /fr/getting-started/ as the equivalent French page.

type: string

Set the language which is the default for this site. The value should match one of the keys of your locales object. (If your default language is your root locale, you can skip this.)

The default locale will be used to provide fallback content where translations are missing.

type: Array<{ label: string; icon: [StarlightIcon](/reference/icons/); href: string }>

Optional details about the social media accounts for this site. Each entry will be displayed as an icon link in the site header.

starlight({
	social: [
		{ icon: 'codeberg', label: 'Codeberg', href: 'https://codeberg.org/knut' },
		{ icon: 'discord', label: 'Discord', href: 'https://astro.build/chat' },
		{ icon: 'github', label: 'GitHub', href: 'https://github.com/withastro' },
		{ icon: 'gitlab', label: 'GitLab', href: 'https://gitlab.com/delucis' },
		{ icon: 'mastodon', label: 'Mastodon', href: 'https://m.webtoo.ls/@astro' },
	],
}),

type: string[]

Provide CSS files to customize the look and feel of your Starlight site.

Supports local CSS files relative to the root of your project, e.g. './src/custom.css', and CSS you installed as an npm module, e.g. '@fontsource/roboto'.

starlight({
	customCss: ['./src/custom-styles.css', '@fontsource/roboto'],
});

type: { headingLinks?: boolean; processedDirs?: string[] }
default: { headingLinks: true, processedDirs: [] }

Configure Starlight’s Markdown processing.

type: boolean
default: true

Controls whether or not headings are rendered with a clickable anchor link.

starlight({
	markdown: {
		// Disable Starlight’s clickable heading anchor links.
		headingLinks: false,
	},
}),

type: string[]
default: []

Define additional directories where files should be processed by Starlight’s Markdown pipeline. By default, only Markdown and MDX content loaded using Starlight's docsLoader() is processed. Supports local directories relative to the root of your project, e.g. './src/data/comments/'.

Starlight’s processing includes support for clickable heading anchor links, asides Markdown directive syntax, and RTL support for code blocks. This option can be useful if you are rendering content from a custom content collection in a custom page using the <StarlightPage> component and expect Starlight's Markdown processing to be applied to that content as well.

starlight({
	markdown: {
		// Process Markdown files from the `reviews` content collection located in the
		// `src/data/reviews/` directory.
		processedDirs: ['./src/data/reviews/'],
	},
}),

type: StarlightExpressiveCodeOptions | boolean
default: true

Starlight uses Expressive Code to render code blocks and add support for highlighting parts of code examples, adding filenames to code blocks, and more. See the “Code blocks” guide to learn how to use Expressive Code syntax in your Markdown and MDX content.

You can use any of the standard Expressive Code configuration options as well as some Starlight-specific properties, by setting them in Starlight’s expressiveCode option. For example, set Expressive Code’s styleOverrides option to override the default CSS. This enables customizations like giving your code blocks rounded corners:

starlight({
	expressiveCode: {
		styleOverrides: { borderRadius: '0.5rem' },
	},
});

If you want to disable Expressive Code, set expressiveCode: false in your Starlight config:

starlight({
	expressiveCode: false,
});

In addition to the standard Expressive Code options, you can also set the following Starlight-specific properties in your expressiveCode config to further customize theme behavior for your code blocks :

type: Array<string | ThemeObject | ExpressiveCodeTheme>
default: ['starlight-dark', 'starlight-light']

Set the themes used to style code blocks. See the Expressive Code themes documentation for details of the supported theme formats.

Starlight uses the dark and light variants of Sarah Drasner’s Night Owl theme by default.

If you provide at least one dark and one light theme, Starlight will automatically keep the active code block theme in sync with the current site theme. Configure this behavior with the useStarlightDarkModeSwitch option.

type: boolean
default: true

When true, code blocks automatically switch between light and dark themes when the site theme changes. When false, you must manually add CSS to handle switching between multiple themes.

type: boolean
default: true if themes is not set, otherwise false

When true, Starlight's CSS variables are used for the colors of code block UI elements (backgrounds, buttons, shadows etc.), matching the site color theme. When false, the colors provided by the active syntax highlighting theme are used for these elements.

type: boolean | [PagefindOptions](#pagefindoptions)
default: true

Configure Starlight’s default site search provider Pagefind.

Set to false to disable indexing your site with Pagefind. This will also hide the default search UI if in use.

Pagefind cannot be enabled when the prerender option is set to false.

Set pagefind to an object to configure the Pagefind search client:

• See “Customize Pagefind's result ranking” in the Pagefind documentation for more details about using the pagefind.ranking option to control how search result ranking is calculated
• See “Searching multiple sites” in the Pagefind documentation for more details about using the pagefind.mergeIndex option to control how to search across multiple sites

interface PagefindOptions {
	ranking?: PagefindRankingOptions;
	indexWeight?: number;
	mergeIndex?: Array<{
		bundlePath: string;
		indexWeight?: number;
		basePath?: string;
		baseUrl?: string;
		mergeFilter?: Record<string, string | string[]>;
		language?: string;
		ranking?: PagefindRankingOptions;
	}>;
}

interface PagefindRankingOptions {
	pageLength?: number;
	termFrequency?: number;
	termSaturation?: number;
	termSimilarity?: number;
	diacriticSimilarity?: number;
	metaWeights?: Record<string, number>;
}

type: boolean
default: true

Define whether Starlight pages should be pre-rendered to static HTML or on-demand rendered by an SSR adapter.

Starlight pages are pre-rendered by default. If you are using an SSR adapter and want to render Starlight pages on demand, set prerender: false.

type: HeadConfig[]

Add custom tags to the <head> of your Starlight site. Can be useful for adding analytics and other third-party scripts and resources.

starlight({
	head: [
		// Example: add Fathom analytics script tag.
		{
			tag: 'script',
			attrs: {
				src: 'https://cdn.usefathom.com/script.js',
				'data-site': 'MY-FATHOM-ID',
				defer: true,
			},
		},
	],
});

Entries in head are converted directly to HTML elements and do not pass through Astro’s script or style processing. If you need to import local assets like scripts, styles, or images, override the Head component.

interface HeadConfig {
	tag: string;
	attrs?: Record<string, string | boolean | undefined>;
	content?: string;
}

type: boolean
default: false

Control whether the footer shows when the page was last updated.

By default, this feature relies on your repository’s Git history and may not be accurate on some deployment platforms performing shallow clones. A page can override this setting or the Git-based date using the lastUpdated frontmatter field.

type: boolean
default: true

Define if the footer should include previous and next page links.

A page can override this setting or the link text and/or URL using the prev and next frontmatter fields.

type: string
default: '/favicon.svg'

Set the path of the default favicon for your website which should be located in the public/ directory and be a valid (.ico, .gif, .jpg, .png, or .svg) icon file.

starlight({
  favicon: '/images/favicon.svg',
}),

If you need to set additional variants or fallback favicons, you can add tags using the head option:

starlight({
	favicon: '/images/favicon.svg',
	head: [
		// Add ICO favicon fallback for Safari.
		{
			tag: 'link',
			attrs: {
				rel: 'icon',
				href: '/images/favicon.ico',
				sizes: '32x32',
			},
		},
	],
});

type: string
default: '|'

Sets the delimiter between page title and site title in the page’s <title> tag, which is displayed on browser tabs.

By default, every page has a <title> of Page Title | Site Title. For example, this page is titled “Configuration Reference” and this site is titled “Starlight”, so the <title> for this page is “Configuration Reference | Starlight”.

type: boolean
default: false

Disables injecting Starlight's default 404 page. To use a custom src/pages/404.astro route in your project, set this option to true.

type: string | string[]

Provide paths to route middleware that can modify how Starlight processes your data. These file paths must not conflict with Astro’s middleware.

See the Route Data guide for details about how to create route middleware.

type: Record<string, string>

Provide the paths to components to override Starlight’s default implementations.

starlight({
	components: {
		SocialLinks: './src/components/MySocialLinks.astro',
	},
});

See the Overrides Reference for details of all the components that you can override.

type: StarlightPlugin[]

Extend Starlight with custom plugins. Plugins apply changes to your project to modify or add to Starlight's features.

Visit the plugins showcase to see a list of available plugins.

starlight({
	plugins: [starlightPlugin()],
});

See the Plugins Reference for details about creating your own plugins.

type: boolean
default: false

Enable displaying a “Built with Starlight” link in your site’s footer.

starlight({
	credits: true,
});

Starlight uses Astro content collections to load your content. Starlight’s content loaders and schemas help configure collections as required.

// src/content.config.ts
import { defineCollection } from 'astro:content';
import { docsLoader, i18nLoader } from '@astrojs/starlight/loaders';
import { docsSchema, i18nSchema } from '@astrojs/starlight/schema';

export const collections = {
	docs: defineCollection({ loader: docsLoader(), schema: docsSchema() }),
	// Optional: the i18n collection is used to translate UI in multilingual sites
	i18n: defineCollection({ loader: i18nLoader(), schema: i18nSchema() }),
};

Starlight exports the following Astro loaders from the @astrojs/starlight/loaders module to simplify configuring content collections.

The docsLoader() loads local Markdown, MDX, and Markdoc files from the src/content/docs/ directory. File names starting with an underscore (_) are ignored.

import { docsLoader } from '@astrojs/starlight/loaders';

type: ({ entry: string; base: URL; data: Record<string, unknown> }) => string

By default, pages generated using docsLoader() process your file names using a sluggifier, which removes special characters and lowercases the file name. If you want to override this default, provide your own custom generateId() function.

For example, this can be useful to preserve special characters that would be removed. By default, Example.File.md would be served at /examplefile. If you wanted to serve it at /Example.File, you could do so by defining a custom generateId() function:

docsLoader({
	// Remove the `.md` or `.mdx` extension, but otherwise don’t process filenames.
	generateId: ({ entry }) => entry.split('.').slice(0, -1).join('.'),
}),

See generateId() in the Astro docs for more details.

The i18nLoader() loads local JSON and YAML files from the src/content/i18n/ directory. File names starting with an underscore (_) are ignored.

import { i18nLoader } from '@astrojs/starlight/loaders';

There are currently no options to configure i18nLoader().

Starlight provides the following content collection schemas from the @astrojs/starlight/schema module. These schemas must be used for the docs and i18n collections Starlight depends on.

The docsSchema() parses frontmatter for all your content in the docs collection.

import { docsSchema } from '@astrojs/starlight/schema';

type: Zod schema or function that returns a Zod schema
default: z.object({})

Extend Starlight’s frontmatter schema with additional fields. See “Customize frontmatter schema” for more details about using the extend option.

The i18nSchema() parses all data files in the i18n collection.

import { i18nSchema } from '@astrojs/starlight/schema';

type: Zod object
default: z.object({})

Extend Starlight’s i18n schema with additional fields. See “Extend translation schema” for more details about using the extend option.