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Custom Export Styles

An Export Style is a named configuration that controls how a document is rendered when you export it to HTML, ePub, or PDF. Styles cover everything from fonts and colors to margins, headers, and footers. Atlas ships with built-in styles for each format, and you can import, duplicate, and create your own Custom Styles to match your publishing needs.

Info

Export Styles control rendered output. They're separate from your Editor Style, which only affects how a document looks while you're writing. See Customizing the Editor for the writing-side equivalent.

Built-in vs. Custom

Every format has a handful of built-in styles:

Format Built-in Styles
HTML System, Classic, Minimal
ePub 3 Standard, Serif, Sans
PDF Default, Modern, Classic, Novel

Built-in styles are marked with a lock badge in the style grid. They can't be deleted or edited directly, but you can always duplicate one to get an editable copy. Custom styles show an author line so you can tell who made them.

Where to Manage Styles

Export Styles live in Settings:

  • iOS / iPadOS — Settings → Export Styles
  • macOS — Settings → Export

The screen shows a thumbnail grid organized into tabs by format (HTML, ePub, PDF). Each card previews the style and shows its name; PDF cards also include an info (i) button that opens a popover with the style's full description.

Importing Styles

Use the Import button in the toolbar of the Export Styles screen to bring in a style file.

  • .pdfstyle — An Atlas PDF style package. Fully supported.
  • .ulstyle — A Ulysses style file. Atlas imports these directly:
    • HTML and ePub CSS themes are fully supported.
    • Rich-text PDF/DOCX styles are partially supported — Atlas converts what it can and surfaces an error when it encounters content it doesn't understand.

After import, the new style appears in the matching format's tab and is immediately available in the export sheet.

A Note on CSS Imports

HTML and ePub styles in Atlas are plain CSS. When you import a .ulstyle CSS theme or bring in your own stylesheet, Atlas uses the CSS exactly as written — it doesn't rewrite selectors, inject variables, or wrap your content in extra markup. That means:

  • Target standard HTML tags. Atlas emits semantic HTML (h1–h6, p, blockquote, ul, ol, pre, code, img, a, hr, table). Style those directly.
  • Atlas-specific hooks are limited. A handful of classes exist for layout-sensitive cases — .chapter-break (wrapper on chapters 2+), hr.atlas-doc-separator (between documents in continuous export), and img.inline (small images sized to flow with text). You can style these to taste.
  • Book-level metadata lives in ePub metadata, not in chapter markup. The title and author you set in the export sheet are written to the ePub's content.opf, not injected into each chapter's body — so you can't style them with selectors like .title or .author. Chapter openings (the first h1 in each file) are where your visual "title" styling should land.
  • ePub-safe properties. ePub 3 readers respect page-break-before, page-break-after, page-break-inside, orphans, and widows. Use them to control pagination.
  • PDF styles aren't CSS. PDF export styles are a structured configuration (fonts, margins, headers/footers, per-heading typography) rather than a stylesheet. Use the PDF style editor or import a .pdfstyle package — CSS does not apply to PDF output.

For the full list of selectors Atlas emits, the ePub package layout, and worked styling examples, see HTML/ePub Style Reference. For PDF style JSON, see PDF Style Reference.

Managing a Style

Right-click (Mac) or long-press (iOS/iPadOS) any style card to open a context menu:

  • Duplicate — Creates an editable copy. Works on both built-in and custom styles.
  • Share — Exports the style as a file you can send to another device or person.
  • Delete — Removes a custom style. Built-in styles cannot be deleted.

iCloud Sync

When iCloud is enabled for Atlas, your custom Export Styles sync across all your devices automatically. Import a style on your Mac and it will appear on your iPad and iPhone shortly afterward.

If a style you imported on one device isn't showing up on another, check that iCloud is enabled and that sync is healthy. See iCloud Sync and Conflicts for troubleshooting.

Applying a Style at Export

  1. Start an export with Cmd+Shift+E or the Editor menu.
  2. Pick HTML, ePub, or PDF as the format.
  3. Choose a style from the thumbnail grid — built-in or custom.
  4. Configure format-specific options (chapter mode, margins, headers, and so on).
  5. Review the live preview, then export.

Folder exports honor the same style pipeline, so whatever style you pick applies across every document in the folder — with separate or continuous output, flat or hierarchical structure, and your chosen image location.

See Also