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Drupal core
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main
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other
Priority:
Normal
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Created:
29 Oct 2025 at 16:13 UTC
Updated:
20 May 2026 at 13:56 UTC
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Problem/Motivation
This came out of a discussion with @lauriii, @gabor hojtsy, @pameeela, @xjm, @wim leers, @phenaproxima, @timplunkett, @pdureau, @ckrina (and others who I may have temporarily forgotten who was at which meeting) at DrupalCon Vienna.
Drupal CMS is taking over the 'default UI install' experience from Drupal core.
#3591027: [META] Remove use case specific elements from Standard and Node module. Always install with Standard. Keep Minimal for CLI use only. is open to slim down the Standard profile so that it doesn't include content types, commenting, node listing, archive and glossary views, etc. That includes not having Olivero as the standard experience anymore (#3590882: Don't enable the Olivero theme by default in the Standard profile/recipe and #3590816: [policy, no patch] Deprecate Olivero and move to contrib).
A side-effect of this is that especially with the navigation module, there's no need to customise the blocks in an admin theme, and if core doesn't have a front end theme, we could probably move the block UI to contrib - allowing sites to use Canvas or UI Suite's display builder without a competing solution in core.
We'd still need a way to have default blocks for a theme, but we might be able to achieve that via a theme.blocks.yml file that maps block plugins and regions, and a display variant that reads from the YAML. That would allow themes to ship with a minimal set of blocks configured without being tied to any particular region/block configuration solution.
Related to this is also #3528104: Remove UI to change admin theme - e.g. removing the UI for selecting an admin theme from the appearance page. That in turn would allow us to move the admin appearance settings to a dedicated page (for whichever admin theme is enabled) rather than just one of the theme settings tabs.
Comments
Comment #2
catchComment #3
catchComment #4
larowlanDo you have a sample of what this yml will look like? Are you thinking something in the info.yml that maps blocks to regions for the theme?
Comment #5
catchComment #6
pameeela commentedComment #7
catch@larowlan that's about as far as I got thinking about what it would look like, but yes either in theme.info.yml or a new theme.default_blocks.yml. It would allow themes to have a minimal working configuration even when nothing else is installed to place blocks in regions.
Comment #8
quietone commentedAdded credit for those listed in the issue summary.
Comment #10
gábor hojtsyFor the title of this issue I accidentally opened #3590882: Don't enable the Olivero theme by default in the Standard profile/recipe and #3590816: [policy, no patch] Deprecate Olivero and move to contrib respectively. There is implementation on the first one that works and discussion on the second one about deprecation. Since this issue was driving towards the removal of block UI goal specifically, I am updating this to refer to that explicitly, so we have an issue to track that, while we already have the other two issues for implementing the "Core should ship with only an admin theme" goal.
Please correct the summary if I misrepresented something.