Hermit-V2 is a minimal, fast, and actively maintained Hugo theme for bloggers who want a clean, single-column website built on the Hugo static site generator. It is a maintained fork of the original Hermit theme, adding bug fixes, modern Hugo compatibility, and new features while keeping the same lean footprint.
What is Hermit-V2?
Hermit-V2 is a Hugo theme, distributed as a Git repository, that takes Markdown content and Hugo configuration as input and produces a static website as output. It requires Hugo Extended v0.146.0 or later, and is maintained by the community around the 1bl4z3r GitHub repository. The theme is open source under the MIT license and works with single-language and multilingual sites.
Key Features
- Single-column layout — A focused reading experience with carefully crafted typography and no third-party frameworks.
- Navigation bar — Hides as you scroll down and reappears when you reach the end of a page.
- Featured images — Displayed as a dimmed full-page background, with optional copyright notice support.
- Syntax highlighting — Built-in highlighting plus one-click code copying on all code blocks, with three input styles: fenced code blocks, indented blocks, and the
highlightshortcode. - Image gallery — The
galleryshortcode supports grid and masonry layouts, automatic thumbnails from local assets, a keyboard-navigable lightbox with URL-hash deep-linking, and no-JS warning messages. - MathJax and Mermaid — LaTeX support via MathJax and diagram support via Mermaid, both configurable with custom library URLs.
- Multi-author support — Posts can attribute authorship three ways, and each author can have their own bio page.
- Customisation — Per-page custom CSS and JS, site-wide SCSS overrides, layout overrides without forking, and print styling per page.
Who is it for?
Hermit-V2 is for bloggers who want a minimal, fast website without a heavy framework. Technical writers can use LaTeX and Mermaid support to publish math-heavy or diagram-rich articles. Developers can customise the theme via SCSS overrides, layout overrides, and per-page assets without forking the repository. Site owners who manage multiple authors can use the built-in author bio pages and flexible attribution.
What can you do with Hermit-V2?
- Personal bloggers: publish posts grouped by year, with pinned posts, read-time estimates, social sharing, and a Scroll to Top button.
- Technical writers: embed LaTeX equations via MathJax, Mermaid diagrams, syntax-highlighted code blocks with copy buttons, and image galleries with lightboxes.
- Multilingual site owners: serve content in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Simplified Chinese using built-in i18n translation files.
- Customisers: add per-page CSS and JS, override SCSS variables for colours and fonts, and inject HTML into the head or footer of every page through dedicated partials.
How does Hermit-V2 work?
Installation is straightforward: clone the repository into themes/hermit-v2 (or add it as a Git submodule), set theme = "hermit-v2" in hugo.toml, and run hugo server -D for local preview. The theme reads configuration from hugo.toml and front matter from content files, with many features enabled per-page via front matter flags like readTime, scrolltotop, and mathjax.
Pros and cons
- Pros: free and open source under MIT, lightweight with no JavaScript frameworks, actively maintained with a staging branch for new features, and responsive retina-ready output.
- Cons: requires Hugo Extended v0.146.0 or later, which may not be available in older operating system package repositories (for example, Debian users must download the binary from the Hugo releases page).
Pricing
Hermit-V2 is free and open source under the MIT license. There are no paid tiers, and the source is available on GitHub.
Alternatives
Alternatives in the minimal Hugo theme space include PaperMod, another popular lightweight Hugo theme, and the original Hermit theme that Hermit-V2 forks. The original Hermit is no longer actively maintained, whereas Hermit-V2 continues to receive updates.
FAQ
What version of Hugo does Hermit-V2 require?
Hermit-V2 requires Hugo Extended v0.146.0 or later. The 0.146.0 release introduced a new flat layout system, so customised layout files from older versions need to be renamed to match the new _partials and _shortcodes directories.
Is Hermit-V2 free?
Yes, Hermit-V2 is released under the MIT license. You can use it for personal or commercial projects without cost, and the source code is available on GitHub.
Does Hermit-V2 support LaTeX and diagrams?
Yes. LaTeX is supported via a configurable MathJax library, and diagrams are supported via Mermaid. Both can be enabled site-wide or per-page, and you can point each to your own CDN or local copy.
Can I customise the theme without forking it?
Yes. The theme supports layout overrides (any file in your layouts/ directory takes precedence), site-wide SCSS overrides by copying files like _colors.scss into assets/scss/, and per-page custom CSS and JS declared in front matter.
Does Hermit-V2 support multiple languages?
Yes. The theme includes i18n translation files for English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Simplified Chinese, and supports multilingual site configuration with language subdirectories.
