Settings

Django Tailwind comes with preconfigured settings. You can override them in the settings.py file of your Django project.

TAILWIND_APP_NAME

This defines the Tailwind theme Django app containing your Tailwind CSS styles. It is recommended to name this app 'theme'. You should generate the app during the installation phase by running the following command:

python manage.py tailwind init

Please refer to the Installation section for more information on the installation process.

NPM_BIN_PATH (npm-based installation only)

Note: This setting only applies to npm-based installations. Skip if using the standalone binary mode.

This defines the path to the npm executable on your system.

Tailwind CSS requires you to have Node.js installed on your machine. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime that allows running JavaScript code outside a browser. Most current frontend tools depend on Node.js.

If you don’t have Node.js installed, please follow the installation instructions on the official Node.js page.

The default value is:

NPM_BIN_PATH = "npm"

Please note that on Windows the path might look different (pay attention to the “backslashes” in the path):

NPM_BIN_PATH = r"C:\Program Files\nodejs\npm.cmd"

TAILWIND_USE_STANDALONE_BINARY

This setting determines whether to use the Tailwind CSS standalone binary instead of npm-based installation.

The default value is:

TAILWIND_USE_STANDALONE_BINARY = False

When set to True, Django Tailwind will use the pytailwindcss package to run the Tailwind CSS standalone binary. This eliminates the need for Node.js and npm.

Note: In most cases, you don’t need to set this manually. Django Tailwind automatically detects standalone installations by checking for the presence of package.json in your theme app. If you initialized your app with --tailwind-version 4s, this detection happens automatically.

To explicitly enable standalone mode:

# settings.py
TAILWIND_USE_STANDALONE_BINARY = True

TAILWIND_STANDALONE_BINARY_VERSION

This setting specifies which version of the Tailwind CSS standalone binary to use.

The default value is:

TAILWIND_STANDALONE_BINARY_VERSION = "v4.3.0"

You can specify any valid Tailwind CSS version tag. To upgrade to a newer version:

# settings.py
TAILWIND_STANDALONE_BINARY_VERSION = "v4.2.0"

After changing this setting, run python manage.py tailwind install to download the new binary version.

Note: This setting only applies when using standalone binary mode. For npm-based installations, the version is controlled by the package.json file in your theme app.

Finding available versions:

Visit the Tailwind CSS releases page to see all available versions. Use the tag name (e.g., v4.3.0) as the value for this setting.

TAILWIND_STANDALONE_START_COMMAND_ARGS

Note: This setting only applies when using standalone binary mode.

This setting defines the command-line arguments passed to the Tailwind CSS standalone binary when running in watch mode (via python manage.py tailwind start).

The default value is:

TAILWIND_STANDALONE_START_COMMAND_ARGS = (
    "-i static_src/src/styles.css -o static/css/dist/styles.css --watch"
)

You can customize this to use different input/output paths or add additional Tailwind CLI options:

# settings.py
TAILWIND_STANDALONE_START_COMMAND_ARGS = (
    "-i theme/static_src/input.css -o theme/static/output.css --watch --minify"
)

Note: The output path automatically uses the value from TAILWIND_CSS_PATH in the default configuration. If you override this setting, ensure your paths are correct.

TAILWIND_STANDALONE_BUILD_COMMAND_ARGS

Note: This setting only applies when using standalone binary mode.

This setting defines the command-line arguments passed to the Tailwind CSS standalone binary when building for production (via python manage.py tailwind build).

The default value is:

TAILWIND_STANDALONE_BUILD_COMMAND_ARGS = (
    "-i static_src/src/styles.css -o static/css/dist/styles.css --minify"
)

You can customize this to use different input/output paths or modify build options:

# settings.py
TAILWIND_STANDALONE_BUILD_COMMAND_ARGS = (
    "-i theme/static_src/input.css -o theme/static/output.css --minify --optimize"
)

Note: The output path automatically uses the value from TAILWIND_CSS_PATH in the default configuration. If you override this setting, ensure your paths match your project structure.

TAILWIND_CSS_PATH

This defines the path to the generated Tailwind CSS stylesheet. If you created a theme app via the python manage.py tailwind init command, you likely don’t need to change this value.

However, if you integrated Tailwind CSS in another way or want to use a CDN version of the bundle, you might want to change the path.

The default value is:

TAILWIND_CSS_PATH = "css/dist/styles.css"

TAILWIND_DEV_MODE (deprecated)

Determines whether the browser-sync snippet is added to the page via the {% tailwind_css %} tag. It is set to False by default. If you use a legacy pre-3.1.0 configuration and rely on browser-sync, add TAILWIND_DEV_MODE=True to your settings.py.