Yokohama, Next Experience (Polaris) Themes Part 8

June 13, 2025 · 4 min read

ServiceNow Wizard

This is Part 8. You should start with Part 1.

Yokohama updates

The Yokohama release is out (and has been for a while, sorry this edition is coming out way late). There are some generally minor, but interesting theme updates

Theme Builder

Lets start with Theme Builder. Still not a fan, but they did some big stuff that is a step in teh right direction. They added a lot of additional granularity in what you can style. Unfortunately it is still not comprehensive and despite my best efforts I can't make what I think is a good looking and consistent theme using it (my litmus test is "can I make Blimey?" It is getting closer).

Other Theme Changes

I found 2 new and interesting sounding Properties

I have not found anywhere that uses this yet, but sounded interesting enough to be notable.

"--now-loader-skeleton--background-color": "--now-color_surface--neutral-6"

This one is more interesting:

"--now-toolbar-nav--background-color-middle": "--now-color_brand--primary"

On a workspace the bar on the left side used to just have a start and end color, and now has a middle color to make a 3 part gradient instead of a 2 part one. This also means that if you are using a custom theme (and it isn't the updated version of mine) this is why that bar started looking weird after you upgraded to Yokohama. If you don't have a value set it will default to a value that may not be what you expected to see.

Theme Agnostic images

They started rolling out with the Washington D.C. release, but there are an increasing number of images showing up that will take on colors from custom themes. This is a very welcome change.

Coral theme

Possibly the worst kept secret is that there is a new base theme coming. It has been increasingly leaking out in official screenshots and videos. It is called Coral and actually shipped with Yokohama, but it isn't "published" so you can't select it oob. You also may not want to because I can also tell you that it isn't the final version and has many issues (accessibility issues, lack of consistency in places etc.). I think it is a fun preview into what is coming, but I wouldn't turn it on in Prod.

Once ServiceNow starts shipping more than one oob theme I think that will make things much better for custom themes because they are going to be forced to make sure colors aren't getting hard coded anywhere. I am looking forward to what is coming.

Bonus cool thing

This one is really only useful for testing while creating a new theme without accidentally making your session unusable because you made all the text white on white or something like that. (this is undocumented and therefore unsupported functionality, use at your own risk, but it shouldn't be able to mess anything up)

If you append ?themeId=<sys_id>&themeVariantId=<sys_id> to the end of the URL the theme will update in that tab and only that tab. So you can test out a new theme or varient without changing the theme you have selected or needing to use a second incognito window while impersonating. I think it is fun and handy to be able to do and a refresh of the tab will clear it out.