Install Tailwind CSS with Parcel

Setting up Tailwind CSS in a Parcel project.

Create your project

Start by creating a new Parcel project if you don’t have one set up already. The most common approach is to add Parcel as a dev-dependency to your project as outlined in their getting started guide.

Terminal

mkdir my-project
cd my-project
npm init -y
npm install parcel
mkdir src
touch src/index.html

Install Tailwind CSS

Install @tailwindcss/postcss and its peer dependencies via npm.

Terminal

npm install tailwindcss @tailwindcss/postcss

Configure PostCSS

Create a .postcssrc file in your project root, and enable the @tailwindcss/postcss plugin.

.postcssrc

{
  "plugins": {
    "@tailwindcss/postcss": {}
  }
}

Import Tailwind CSS

Create a ./src/index.css file and add an @import for Tailwind CSS.

index.css

@import "tailwindcss";

Start your build process

Run your build process with npx parcel src/index.html.

Terminal

npx parcel src/index.html

Start using Tailwind in your project

Add your CSS file to the <head> and start using Tailwind’s utility classes to style your content.

index.html

<!doctype html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <link href="./index.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1 class="text-3xl font-bold underline">
      Hello world!
    </h1>
  </body>
</html>