A more modern look for Qlik charts: new defaults and a new theme (Public Preview)

[Marcus_Tannerfalk]

If you build sheets and dashboards in Qlik Cloud, this one's for you. We've refreshed the default styling of our visualizations and added a new theme, so charts look polished the moment you drop them on a sheet, without you having to tune a dozen styling properties by hand.

This is one of the features going through our Public Preview program. Your feedback will help shape the experience as we move toward general availability. See "How to activate it" below to get started.

What's new

• New default theme, "Foundation": A cleaner baseline for spacing, borders, and object styling.
• A second theme, "New horizon": Built on Qlik brand colors, for when you want a bolder look.
• Smoother lines: Line and combo charts now use a monotone curve by default instead of straight segments between points.
• Heavier line weight: Default line thickness is now 3 px in line and combo charts, including forecast lines, and in the point and line plugins on bar and scatter charts.
• Larger data points: Default point size is 8 in line and combo charts, and 12 for the point and line plugins.
• Tidier pie charts: The legend and dimension labels are off by default, so the chart itself carries the story.
• Less visual noise: The hover menu is off by default on KPI, filter pane, and gauge objects.
• Predictable text sizing: Text and image objects default to no responsive text behavior, so type stays the size you set it.
• Theming you control from the theme file: Object padding, sheet-level margin between objects, border width, border color, and border radius are now all theme JSON settings, rather than being baked into CSS overrides.

Existing sheets keep their current look. The new defaults apply as you work with charts going forward, and you can still set any of these properties yourself per object. See [Styling visualizations] for the full list of properties.

How to activate it

Feature previews must first be enabled for your tenant, and your tenant admin needs to grant you access via the Feature previews permission. If you don't see Feature previews in your profile, check with your tenant admin.
Once you have access, go to your User profile > Feature previews and activate the ["New themes"] preview feature. From there you can switch at any time. See [Feature previews] for details on how the program works.

What to focus on when experimenting

We're especially interested in hearing about:

• How the new defaults look on your real dashboards, not just on a fresh sheet
• Whether "Foundation" and "New horizon" work as starting points, or whether you immediately reach for a custom theme
• The new padding, margin, and border settings: do they give you the control you need in your own themes?
• Density: whether thicker lines and larger points read well on charts with many series or dense data
• Anything that feels different from what you're used to, even small things

A couple of things we already know

• Pie chart legends and dimension labels are off by default now. If your sheets rely on them, turn them back on per object.
• If you maintain a custom theme that leaned on the previous card CSS behavior, you may need to move those values into the new theme JSON settings.

How to share feedback

Use the in the Feature previews dialog.

We built this because good analysis deserves to look the part. Try it out, tell us how it feels, and help us make it better.