Config, Modules, and custom CSS

After the first start of the container you find 3 directories

~/magicmirror/mounts/config
~/magicmirror/mounts/modules
~/magicmirror/mounts/css

config contains the config.js, you find more information here.

You can also use a config.js.template instead which can contain environment variables (this is not possible in config.js). This make sense for keeping secrets (e.g. passwords, api keys) out of the config file. In config.js.template you can use shell variable syntax e.g. ${MY_SECRET} as placeholder for your secrets. Don't forget to pass variables in config.js.template as environment variables to the container:

    environment:
      MY_SECRET: "abc"

You can also use the .env file (in the same directory as your compose.yaml) to define your secrets there, for more info on this see the docker compose reference.

👉 When the container starts, the config.js will be created using the config.js.template. An existing config.js will be overwritten and saved as config.js-old

For installing modules refer to the module website, the default modules are described here.

There is one difference installing or updating modules compared to a standard setup: You must do the git clone ..., git pull and npm install commands from inside the running docker container. For this you execute docker exec -it mm bash and in this shell you navigate to the modules/MMM-... folder. For exiting from the container you type exit.

css contains the custom.css file, which you can use to override your modules' appearance. CSS basics are documented here, among many other places.

👉 The css-files in the css folder which exists in the MagicMirror² git repo (currently only main.css) are overriden with the original file from inside the container with every restart. So if you need to change this file, you must stop this default copying by setting the environment variable MM_OVERRIDE_CSS to false in the .env file:

MM_OVERRIDE_CSS="false"

Default Modules

The default modules of MagicMirror² are located in the folder ~/magicmirror/mounts/modules. These modules are maintained in the MagicMirror² project and not - as other modules - in own git repositories. So if they are mounted the first time outside the container this version remains on the host and would never updated again. To prevent this, the docker container overrides the default modules folder with the versions from inside the container.

If someone does not agree with this procedure he can avoid the copy process by setting the environment variable MM_OVERRIDE_DEFAULT_MODULES to false in the .env file:

MM_OVERRIDE_DEFAULT_MODULES="false"

Timezone

The container tries to get the timezone by location. If this is not possible or wrong, you can set the timezone to a different value by editing the compose.yaml file. You have to add the timezone as environment variable:

    environment:
      TZ: Europe/Berlin

Mouse cursor

The mouse cursor is diabled by default. You can enable it by setting the environment variable MM_SHOW_CURSOR to true in your .env file:

MM_SHOW_CURSOR="true"