Drupal: Admin UI, Navigation and Admin Themes

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This sub-section’s Drupal bibliography lists the reference material consulted while preparing these pages.

Everything an editor, site builder or administrator does after logging in happens in the administration interface: the side or top menu that leads to the content, structure and configuration screens, and the administration theme that styles those screens. This page explains the pieces of that interface, how they are chosen and configured, what changes between Drupal 11 and Drupal 12, and how to tailor the experience for the roles of a real site.

It was written against Drupal 11.4.x, with Drush 13 or 14 and PHP 8.3 or later, and the facts were checked against the official documentation on 2026-10-30. Drupal 12.0.0 is scheduled for the week of 2026-12-07 and the end of life of Drupal 10 for 2026-12-09, so both are described as upcoming. The running example is the Meridian Museum: the module meridian_collection, the content types exhibition and event, and the roles Content Editor, Curator and Reviewer.

The pieces of the administration interface

The administration interface is the sum of several independent parts, each of which can be replaced:

  • The navigation: the menu that lists administration sections. Core offers two implementations, the older Toolbar module and the newer Navigation module.

  • The administration theme: the theme used on /admin/* pages and, optionally, on content forms. Core ships Claro (the long-time default) and Default Admin, a theme based on the contributed Gin theme.

  • Shortcuts: the Shortcut module lets each user keep a personal or shared list of favourite administration links.

  • Dashboards: a landing page with widgets, provided by the contributed Dashboard module rather than by core.

  • The administration menu tree: the admin menu and the menu links declared by modules in their *.links.menu.yml files (see menus and path aliases).

Because the parts are independent, changing the navigation does not change the theme and vice versa. A site can run Navigation with Claro, or Toolbar with Default Admin. The combination of Default Admin and Toolbar has been reported to need fixes in 11.4 (see the version notes below), which is one reason to treat Navigation as the supported pairing.

flowchart TD A["Request to /admin/content"] --> B{"Which theme?"} B -->|"system.theme:admin"| C["Administration theme: Claro or Default Admin"] A --> D{"Which navigation module is installed?"} D -->|"navigation"| E["Navigation sidebar: menu blocks and logo"] D -->|"toolbar"| F["Toolbar tray: admin menu tree and shortcuts"] C --> G["Rendered administration page"] E --> G F --> G

Source: Navigation module

The Navigation module

The Navigation module "provides the administration UI", in the words of its official documentation page. It presents the administration tasks as a collapsible, vertical sidebar on the left of the screen. Choosing an entry opens a full-height drawer with the deeper levels, and on small screens the navigation becomes a bar above the content that opens as an overlay. The default menu is built for fast access to content creation and content management, which is what editors need most; deeper configuration screens remain reachable through the menu blocks.

Versions and status

  • It was introduced as an experimental module in the Drupal 10 and early 11 cycles, and became stable in Drupal 11.3 (December 2025). The 11.3.0 announcement describes it as "a superior and more modern experience than the old Toolbar" and recommends installing it on all sites, most of all those with a large administration structure.

  • On a site created by the Standard profile, or by recipes that follow it, Navigation is the navigation that replaces the Toolbar. Reports on the core change place the commit in March 2026, so the exact release in which a fresh Standard install starts with Navigation is best confirmed in the release notes of the version in use.

  • In Drupal 12 the Toolbar module (together with Shortcut) leaves core. Navigation is the navigation that remains in the core codebase.

Customising it

Navigation is built from blocks, so it is customised with the same ideas as the rest of the block system (compare blocks and block layout):

  • Site builders can add menu blocks, reorder them and add custom menus through the UI.

  • The default logo can be replaced with the site’s own, which is how the Meridian Museum shows its logo in the corner of the sidebar instead of the stock one.

  • A module adds entries by declaring ordinary menu links under an existing administration parent. Entries placed under the content or structure parents appear in the corresponding section of the sidebar.

The permissions that control what a role sees are the permissions of the underlying routes, not a navigation-only setting. A link is rendered only when the current user has access to its route, so a Content Editor never sees Configuration entries. The pages that appear for a given role can therefore be checked simply by logging in as that role or with a test account created for that role.

Enabling it with Drush

# Install the Navigation module and make it the active navigation.
drush pm:install navigation

# Remove the Toolbar once Navigation works for every role. Uninstalling a module deletes its configuration.
drush pm:uninstall toolbar

drush cache:rebuild

Source: Navigation module

Uninstalling Toolbar before Navigation is confirmed to work leaves the site without any administration menu; the administration pages are then reachable only by typing their paths. When both are installed, two navigation systems render at the same time, which wastes screen space and confuses editors, so one of them should be removed.

Adding a menu link for Meridian curators

# meridian_collection.links.menu.yml
meridian_collection.settings:
  title: 'Collection settings'
  description: 'Sync options and display rules for collection objects.'
  route_name: meridian_collection.settings
  parent: system.admin_config
  weight: 20

meridian_collection.collection_overview:
  title: 'Collection objects'
  route_name: entity.collection_object.collection
  parent: system.admin_content
  weight: 10

Source: Creating modules: Defining menu links

The links show up in whichever navigation is installed, because both read the same menu tree. The route entity.collection_object.collection is the listing route of the custom entity described in custom entity types.

The Toolbar module

The Toolbar module is the classic horizontal administration bar, with a tray that can be shown horizontally or vertically and that lists the admin menu tree. It also hosts the Shortcuts tray and the user links. It is lightweight and well known, and many contributed modules extend it. The most common extension is Admin Toolbar, which turns the tray into a drop-down menu and adds cache-flush and cron links. Admin Toolbar builds on the core Toolbar, and its project page does not describe any integration with Navigation or Default Admin, so a site that moves to Navigation should check whether it still needs the extension at all.

  • The permission Use the toolbar decides who sees it.

  • In Drupal 12 the module is moved to a contributed project, and the same is true for Shortcut. A site on 11.3 or later that still uses them must either uninstall them or require the contributed projects with Composer before it upgrades. The 12.0.0 beta release notes warn against uninstalling an extension that is still needed, because that destroys its configuration and data.

  • Older books such as Drupal 10 Development Cookbook (2023) and Drupal 10 Masterclass (2023) show the Toolbar as the administration menu. That is accurate for Drupal 10, but on a new Drupal 11.3 or later site the Navigation module is the menu to learn, and on Drupal 12 the Toolbar is no longer in core.

The administration theme

An administration theme is a normal theme that Drupal selects for administrative routes. Routes opt in with the _admin_route option, and the theme negotiator (system.theme.negotiator.admin_theme) returns the theme stored in the admin key of the system.theme configuration object. The same value is what the Appearance screen at /admin/appearance calls the Administration theme.

drush config:get system.theme
drush theme:install default_admin
drush config:set system.theme admin default_admin
drush cache:rebuild

Source: Theme configuration and info file

Claro

Claro has been the default administration theme of core since Drupal 9. It is accessibility-focused, has no base theme and is built from CSS custom properties. It remains in Drupal 11, but it is not the long-term choice: Claro is removed from core in Drupal 12 and may be offered as a contributed theme for sites that want to keep it during an upgrade. The same removal applies to Olivero and to the deprecated Stable 9 theme (see removed core modules and replacements).

Default Admin, the Gin-based theme

The Drupal core blog announced in June 2025 that the contributed Gin theme would replace Claro as the default admin theme. The reasoning given was that Drupal then had two default admin themes, Claro in core and Gin in Drupal CMS, and that every new administration feature had to work well with both. The approach was to develop a core-ready Gin in a separate branch, remove its dependency on Claro, cut features that do not belong in core and add test coverage. The announcement targeted the Drupal 11.3 timeframe, and the work landed later: in Drupal 11.4 (released 1 July 2026) the theme arrived as an experimental core theme named Default Admin, with a dark mode option, while Claro stayed the default.

Facts about the theme, taken from its default_admin.info.yml in core:

  • its machine name is default_admin and it has no base theme;

  • it declares regions such as header, pre_content, breadcrumb, highlighted, help, content, page_top, page_bottom and sidebar_first (the sidebar is hidden by default);

  • it overrides the assets of many core components through libraries-override, among them tabledrag, the status report, vertical tabs, dropbuttons, Field UI, Views UI, the media library and sticky table headers.

Because some sources refer to the theme only as "Admin" (the working name used while it was merged), searches for older discussions should try both names.

In Drupal 12 Default Admin is promoted from experimental to stable and replaces Claro as the administration theme. Sites that stay on Claro until then should plan the change as a normal theme switch, because custom CSS written against Claro class names and libraries does not carry over automatically.

Which theme should a site choose?

Drupal version Recommended admin theme Notes

10.x

Claro

Gin as a contributed theme is common on Drupal 10 sites. Drupal 10 ends on 2026-12-09, so new sites should not start here.

11.0 to 11.3

Claro, or the contributed Gin

Default Admin does not exist yet.

11.4

Claro, or Default Admin for testing

Default Admin is experimental; evaluate it on a copy of the site first.

12.0 (scheduled)

Default Admin

Claro is no longer in core.

Source: Drupal core will adopt Gin admin theme to replace Claro

Using the admin theme for content editing

Visitors never see the administration theme, but editors do whenever it is applied to content forms. The Administration theme section of /admin/appearance has a checkbox, "Use the administration theme when editing or creating content", stored as use_admin_theme in the node.settings configuration object. It matters for two reasons: the node form then looks the same as every other administration screen, and the tooling that styles the form (the sticky action bar, the layout of the revision information) belongs to the administration theme and not to the front-end theme.

# config/sync/system.theme.yml (excerpt)
default: meridian
admin: default_admin

# config/sync/node.settings.yml (excerpt)
use_admin_theme: true

Source: User Guide: Concept: Administrative Theme

The permission View the administration theme decides who is shown the administration theme at all. Users without it see the default front-end theme on administrative pages, which is a frequent source of "my administration looks different for some roles" reports. Grant it to every role that uses the administration screens. The related permission Use the administration pages and help (access administration pages) controls the overview pages under /admin.

Shortcut

The Shortcut module gives each user a set of shortcut links. Each shortcut set is a configuration entity (shortcut.set.default is the default); users with Edit current shortcut set can add the page they are looking at with the star icon, and administrators can create sets and assign them to roles. With the Toolbar the shortcuts tray lists them; with Navigation a shortcut block shows them. In Drupal 12 Shortcut moves to a contributed project, so sites on 11.x that depend on custom shortcut sets should add drupal/shortcut to composer.json before the upgrade, and should export the sets with configuration management (see configuration management) so that they can be restored.

Dashboards

Core has no dashboard. The Dashboard module, a contributed project that is also part of Drupal CMS, provides a landing page of widgets and blocks that give each logged-in user a quick overview of the parts of the site that matter to them. Its stable 2.x series (2.2.1 at the time of writing) works with Drupal ^11.2 and is covered by the Security Team. Several dashboards can be defined, access to each is controlled by permissions, and users can change the layout and content of a dashboard. For the Meridian Museum the useful dashboards are:

  • one for the Content Editor role: drafts waiting for the editor, recently changed exhibitions and upcoming events;

  • one for the Curator role: objects marked on_display, objects without an accession_number and the queue of items waiting to be synced from the collections-management API;

  • one for the Reviewer role: content in the review moderation state (see content moderation workflows and revisions).

composer require 'drupal/dashboard:^2.2'
drush pm:install dashboard

Source: Dashboard project page

Customising the editor experience

Navigation and the administration theme are only the frame. The editor experience also depends on the following settings, each described in more depth on its own page:

  • Roles and permissions: give each role only the permissions it needs, so its menu stays short (users, roles and permissions).

  • Form display: hide fields the role never uses and group the rest, in the content type’s form display (content types and fields).

  • The text editor: restrict formats and toolbar buttons per role (text formats and CKEditor 5).

  • Media: use the media library widget so editors pick images instead of uploading them again (media and the media library).

  • Visual page building: Drupal CMS 2.x makes Canvas the default editing experience (Canvas); Layout Builder stays in core (Layout Builder).

  • Workflow: moderation states and transitions shown as buttons on the edit form.

The page theming overview and the render pipeline explains how the front-end theme and the administration theme coexist.

Common errors and pitfalls

  • Two navigations at once: installing Navigation without uninstalling Toolbar shows both. Pick one.

  • Lost menu after uninstalling Toolbar: the Navigation module must be installed first and checked with an editor account.

  • Default Admin with Toolbar: in Drupal 11.4 the theme dropped its Toolbar integration and left an override that pointed to a missing stylesheet, which was fixed in 11.4.x (core issue 3612540). Maintainers prefer removing the override as part of dropping Toolbar support from the theme, so combining the two is unsupported ground. Admin Toolbar was also reported to show large top padding under Default Admin 11.4.1 (core issue 3609859); check that issue before combining them.

  • Content forms in the front-end theme: the Administration theme when editing or creating content box is unchecked, or the role lacks View the administration theme.

  • Custom CSS that targets Claro: selectors and libraries written for Claro do not apply to Default Admin; use a sub-theme or the libraries-extend key of a small custom theme.

  • Removed modules before an upgrade: uninstalling Toolbar, Shortcut or Claro to "fix" an upgrade check deletes their configuration; require the contributed project instead.

  • Caching: a menu link added by a module appears only after drush cache:rebuild because the menu tree is cached.

Security notes

  • The administration theme and navigation hide links but do not grant or deny access. Access is always decided by route permissions and entity access, so a hidden link must never be treated as protection.

  • Keep /admin behind HTTPS, strong passwords and, for privileged roles, a second factor (see security hardening).

  • Avoid giving the administer themes and administer permissions permissions to anyone below the Administrator role: a theme switch changes every page of the site.

  • Contributed navigation add-ons run JavaScript for administrators on every page. Install only supported projects and keep them updated (see updates, Composer and security advisories).

Preparing for Drupal 12

Run these checks on a copy of the site while it is on 11.3 or later:

# Which of the affected extensions are installed?
drush pm:list --status=enabled --type=module | grep -E 'toolbar|shortcut|navigation'
drush config:get system.theme admin
drush theme:list --status=enabled

Source: Drupal 12.0.0-beta1 release notes

The upgrade path is described in preparing for Drupal 12, and the replacement table in removed core modules and replacements. In short: Toolbar is replaced by Navigation, Claro by Default Admin, and Shortcut and the other moved modules are required from contrib when still needed.

References