Themes and object styles: design consistency at scale

Expert

Use FileMaker themes and named styles to maintain design consistency and update the appearance of many objects at once.

What you'll learn

How named styles work and how to apply them to objects
How to edit a style to update all objects using it at once
When to create a custom style vs. modifying an existing one

FileMaker's theming system assigns named styles to layout objects. When you update a style in the Manage Themes dialog, every object using that style updates instantly. This is the only scalable way to maintain visual consistency across a large solution with many layouts.

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Applying a named style

In Layout mode with an object selected, the Styles panel (View > Styles) shows available named styles for that object type. Click a style name to apply it. The Inspector then shows the style name rather than raw property values.

FileMaker Script

// Style naming conventions:
// Button Primary        → main action button
// Button Secondary      → secondary action
// Button Destructive    → delete/archive actions
// Field Inline          → borderless field for inline editing
// Field Standard        → default bordered form field
// Label Heading         → section header text
// Label Body            → regular body text

Inspector panel: advanced object properties Custom menu sets