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MUI System - Overview

MUI System is a set of CSS utilities to help you build custom designs more efficiently. It makes it possible to rapidly lay out custom designs.

Introduction

MUI System is a set of CSS utilities to help you build custom designs more efficiently. It's used internally by libraries like Material UI, Joy UI, and can also be applied to style Base UI components.

MUI System provides a collection of flexible, generic wrapper components such as Box and Container, which can be easily customized using the sx prop. This prop allows you to define styles directly within the components themselves, eliminating the need for cumbersome and redundant const definitions with styled-components. It also grants direct access to your theme's custom design tokens, ensuring consistency in one-off styles. Learn more on the sx prop page.

Advantages of MUI System

  • Streamline Development: By replacing verbose styled-components code with the concise sx prop, MUI System significantly accelerates development cycles, enabling developers to focus on crafting exceptional user experiences.
  • Leverage Existing CSS Knowledge: Built on a CSS superset, the sx prop is inherently intuitive, making it accessible to developers familiar with CSS. This familiarity expedites the adoption process and empowers teams to hit the ground running.
  • Enhance Workflow Efficiency: With MUI System, developers can bid farewell to context-switching between styled-component usage and definition. By consolidating styling efforts within components, MUI System enhances workflow efficiency and promotes collaboration.
  • Simplify Naming Conventions: Say goodbye to the struggle of naming styled-components. MUI System's straightforward approach eliminates the need for convoluted naming conventions, allowing developers to focus on building exceptional interfaces.
  • Boost Performance: MUI System optimizes rendering performance by employing efficient CSS utilities, resulting in faster load times and smoother user interactions.
  • Ensure Cross-Browser Compatibility: With built-in support for modern CSS features and automatic vendor prefixing, MUI System ensures consistent rendering across various browsers, saving developers time and effort in addressing compatibility issues.
  • Promote Code Reusability: MUI System facilitates code reuse through its modular and composable design, allowing developers to create reusable styling patterns that can be easily applied across different components and projects.

MUI System vs. Base UI

Base UI is a library of "unstyled" React components, while MUI System is a set of utilities for quickly applying styles to those components (as well as our other component libraries like Material UI and Joy UI).

Base UI is a standalone component library, whereas MUI System is supplemental in that it's designed to be paired with Base UI or any third-party components. See the Custom components page for details on how to use MUI System.