Gin admin theme

Gin is an administration theme for Drupal. It restyles the back end where editors and site builders work: the content list, the edit forms, the Appearance page and the configuration screens. It is a contributed project on drupal.org, not part of Drupal core, and it builds on core's Claro theme.

How Gin works in Drupal 11

Gin is a normal Drupal theme. Its gin.info.yml declares base theme: claro, so it inherits Claro and overrides styles and some library files. You select it as the administration theme; it does nothing for the pages visitors see.

The drupal.org project page, checked on 26 October 2026, lists two maintainers, saschaeggi and jurgenhaas, and two stable releases, both published on 14 October 2026. Gin 5.0.16 needs Drupal 11.2 or later. Gin 4.1.4 serves Drupal 10.3 and Drupal 11 below 11.2. Stable releases fall under the Drupal Security Team advisory policy.

Gin 5.0.16 requires the Gin Toolbar project in its composer.json, so Composer installs both. The Gin README recommends enabling Gin Toolbar so all functions work. Gin Login, a separate project, adds a styled login screen.

The settings form in the Gin source offers these choices, among others:

• Appearance: Light, Dark or Auto.
• Accent color and focus color.
• Layout density for tables: Default, Compact or Narrow.
• Enable form description toggle: a help icon that shows or hides form descriptions on content forms.
• Users can override Gin settings: lets each account keep its own values.

The Gin documentation says to open these through the Settings button in the Installed themes section of the Appearance page.

Gin and Drupal core

In June 2025 a post on the Drupal core blog announced a plan to bring Gin into core and make it the default, aiming for Drupal 11.3 in December 2025. The post said Claro would stay in Drupal 11 for existing sites, and that a core-ready Gin would be developed outside core in a 6.x branch.

The merge itself landed in March 2026 (issue 3556948) as an experimental theme named admin, renamed in a follow-up issue. In the source of 11.4.10 and 11.4.11, the released line on 26 October 2026, it is named Default Admin, with machine name default_admin, and its info file carries lifecycle: experimental. The Standard profile there still sets admin: claro, and the core recipe for the admin theme also sets up Claro. Core issue 3624359 then removed the experimental flag. In 11.5.0-beta1, released on 15 October 2026, Default Admin has no lifecycle key, the Standard profile and the admin theme recipe set admin: default_admin, and Claro is marked deprecated. The Drupal.org page on deprecated extensions, updated 21 September 2026, says Claro is deprecated in Drupal 11.5.0 and removed in Drupal 12.0.0, and that sites should plan to use Default Admin. On 26 October 2026 both of those releases were still in beta.

Example

On a Composer-managed Drupal 11 site, run these two commands from the project root:

composer require 'drupal/gin:^5.0'
        drush theme:enable gin

Then open the Appearance page, scroll to the Administration theme section, choose Gin and save. The next time an editor opens the content list, the back end uses Gin.

Common mistakes

• Setting Gin as the default theme. Choose it under Administration theme at the bottom of the Appearance page; making it the default theme puts the admin look on the public pages.
• Treating the core Default Admin theme as production ready. The released 11.4 line flags it experimental, and 11.5.0-beta1, which drops the flag, is still a beta, so test it on a copy of the site first.
• Falling behind on updates. The 14 October 2026 releases are listed on the project page as resolving security advisory SA-CONTRIB-2026-219; apply them like any other contributed update.

For marketing and content teams

Gin changes only what you see while logged in. Dark mode and Auto, which follows the operating system, can ease long editing sessions; the Compact and Narrow densities fit more rows on the content list. Ask your developer whether per-user overrides are enabled, otherwise one site-wide choice applies to every user.

Sources

• Drupal.org: Gin Admin Theme project page
• Drupal.org: Gin documentation, specific settings within Gin
• Drupal.org: Gin installation and configuration
• Drupal core blog: Drupal core will adopt Gin admin theme to replace Claro
• Drupal.org issue 3556948: Merging Gin as Admin theme
• Gin 5.0.16 source: gin.info.yml, composer.json and settings form (git.drupalcode.org)
• Drupal core 11.4.10 source: default_admin.info.yml (git.drupalcode.org)
• Drupal.org: Deprecated and obsolete extensions (Claro)
• Drupal.org issue 3624359: Remove lifecycle experimental from Admin's info.yml
• Drupal core 11.4.11 source: Standard profile system.theme.yml
• Drupal core 11.4.11 source: admin theme recipe
• Drupal core 11.5.0-beta1 source: default_admin.info.yml
• Drupal core 11.5.0-beta1 source: Standard profile system.theme.yml
• Drupal core 11.5.0-beta1 source: admin theme recipe