Aqua

The classic Mac OS X interface — gel buttons, pinstripes, brushed metal — rebuilt as a shadcn/ui registry.

aqua.duca.dev · Docs · Mail demo · Chat demo

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Aqua recreates the Apple interface of 2000–2007 as accessible React components: Radix primitives underneath, Tailwind CSS gel gradients on top. Like everything in the shadcn ecosystem, it is not a package you import — components are copied into your project as open code. Change anything, own everything.

Quick start

Register the namespace in your components.json:

{
  "registries": {
    "@aqua": "https://aqua.duca.dev/r/{name}.json"
  }
}

Install the theme, then add components:

npx shadcn@latest add @aqua/theme
npx shadcn@latest add @aqua/button @aqua/tabs @aqua/select

Components import from your own project:

import { Button } from "@/components/ui/button"

<Button>gorgeous</Button>

Components

Core — Alert, Avatar, Badge, Button, Checkbox, Code Block, Cursor, Dialog, Dropdown Menu, Input, Label, Loader, Progress, Radio Group, Select, Slider, Switch, Tabs, Textarea, Toast, Tooltip

Signature — the pieces that only make sense in this design language:

• Window — brushed metal chrome with traffic lights
• Dock — magnifying icons, haloed labels, running indicators
• Chat Bubble — iChat gradient bubbles with sculpted tails
• iPod — white shell, LCD screen, a working click wheel
• Cursor — wrap your app and get the era arrow, hand and I-beam back

Every component is themable through a single CSS variable:

:root {
  --aqua-accent: #e02f6b; /* strawberry */
}

The gel gradients, edges and focus rings are derived with color-mix, so one line rethemes everything — globally or scoped to any subtree.

For AI agents

Aqua ships /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt with complete setup and per-component usage, and every docs page has a Copy AI prompt button that produces a ready-to-paste instruction for your agent of choice.

Development

This repository is the registry and its documentation site (Next.js 15, Tailwind v4, Bun).

bun install
bun run dev            # docs site on localhost:3000
bun run registry:build # rebuild public/r/*.json from registry.json

Component sources live in registry/aqua/ui/. The docs live in components/docs-content.tsx.

Credits

Designed and built by Igor Duca (@ducaswtf). The original design language belongs to Apple — this is a tribute, not an affiliation.

License

MIT