Soft Aurora
Northern lights: curtains of colour with a crisp lower edge and long, soft vertical rays, folding slowly across the sky in two colours. WebGL, written in the file.
- Category: Animated React Backgrounds
- Licence: Charcoal UI Pro
- Built with: React 19, Tailwind CSS 4, Motion
- Dependencies: motion, clsx, tailwind-merge
Examples
Soft Aurora
API reference
| Prop | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
speed | number | 1 | 0 holds still. |
color / color2 | string | — | |
intensity | number | 1 | |
height | number | 0.5 | |
className | string | — |
About Soft Aurora
Soft Aurora draws northern lights: curtains of colour with a crisp lower edge and long, soft vertical rays, folding slowly across the sky in two colours of your choice.
Soft Aurora is an animated background for React 19, styled with Tailwind CSS 4 and animated with Motion. It drops into Next.js, Vite, Remix or Astro through the shadcn CLI as a single file you own.
When to use Soft Aurora
- Calm hero sections.
- Wellness and travel brands.
- Night-mode landing pages.
- Ambient backgrounds behind sign-up forms.
How it works
Three curtains layer at different depths, each shaped by noise along its edge with rays from a second noise pass. The shader is written in the file, with no three.js or other dependency. It pauses when scrolled out of view, caps the pixel ratio at 2, re-reads your theme colours when the theme changes, and falls back to a soft gradient where WebGL is missing.
The whole layer is decorative and aria-hidden, sits behind your content without taking pointer events it does not need, and pauses when scrolled off screen. With prefers-reduced-motion on, it holds still or settles instantly instead of animating.
Customizing Soft Aurora
Every prop is documented in the API reference above with its type and default. The ones you will reach for first are listed here.
The Customize panel next to the preview lets you change speed, intensity, height, color, color2 live, and the Code tab updates to match, so the snippet you copy already carries your values.
- speed (number, default 1): 0 holds still.
- color / color2 (string).
- intensity (number, default 1).
- height (number, default 0.5).
Goes well with Soft Aurora
These backgrounds pieces share its tokens and motion language, so they sit together on one page without clashing.
- Ember Field: An animated React ember background: glowing embers drift up and flicker as they cool
- Smoke: A slow React smoke background: blurred plumes drifting over dark sections, CSS only
- Aurora: An animated React aurora background: soft light bands drifting across a section
- Grid Beams: A React grid background with beams of light running along its lines
- Meteors: A React meteor shower background: streaks falling diagonally, CSS only
Install Soft Aurora
npx shadcn@latest add @charcoal/soft-auroraSoft Aurora is part of Charcoal UI Pro. One seat unlocks all 393 Pro components, 112 landing-page sections and 100 full templates, for every personal and client project, with updates included. Add the @charcoal registry once with your access token, then the command above copies soft-aurora.tsx into components/ui and installs clsx, tailwind-merge.
You own the file you install: no runtime package, no lock-in, nothing to keep in sync. Change it however your product needs.
See Charcoal UI Pro pricing · Pro setup
Frequently asked questions
- How do I install Soft Aurora?
- Soft Aurora is part of Charcoal UI Pro. Add the @charcoal registry to components.json with your access token, then run npx shadcn@latest add @charcoal/soft-aurora. It copies soft-aurora.tsx into components/ui and installs motion, clsx, tailwind-merge.
- Is Soft Aurora free for commercial use?
- Soft Aurora needs a Charcoal UI Pro seat, monthly or a one-time lifetime price. A seat covers unlimited personal and commercial projects, including client work, and every future Pro component.
- Does Soft Aurora work with Next.js?
- Yes. It is a client component for React 19 styled with Tailwind CSS 4, so it works in the Next.js App Router and Pages Router, Vite, Remix and Astro.
- Can an AI coding agent install Soft Aurora?
- Yes. Connect the Charcoal UI MCP server (https://charcoalui.com/mcp) to Claude Code, Cursor or any MCP client; get_component returns Soft Aurora's props and get_install_command returns the exact command.