Should you use Gin admin theme in Drupal?

What is Gin?

Gin is a contributed administration theme that is one of the most installed administration themes in Drupal 10. It offers a new UI layout that gives your administration pages a facelift. Supports dark mode.

Why should you consider it?

• Modern theme with dark mode support
• A lot of UI enhancements
• Good community support and the largest community
• Each user can have own settings

The theme looks different from usual Drupal themes and has a few UI changes making editing more comfortable. It comes with its toolbar module and has options like enabling dark mode support, accent colors, layout density, and toolbar options.

My experience with Gin has been somewhat fine - things sometimes break and most of the time you won't notice that at all. Fortunately, patches are quickly coming, but you must be ready to apply them if the problem is noticeable. It has worked fine for the clients I have used so far. I recommend at least checking it out.

Why should you not consider it and stick with Claro?

• There are bugs, because it is way more complicated theme
• Things may break or change with every release
• External dependency and no official Drupal support
• Contrib modules may need to add Gin theme support (or support needs to be implemented on the Gin side)

Claro is a new default theme for Drupal and is most likely disliked by some users as it has a lot of spacing everywhere. There is also the Seven theme available, but I wouldn't recommend it - unless the community takes it over, no one will care enough to update it with new things.

Summary

If you prefer stability and Claro looks fine, stick with it - it works fine and all contributed modules are built using that theme. If you want something new and fresh and don't mind some things might change or look a bit off, Gin might be the answer.

If you feel adventurous, check out other admin themes in the Drupal themes search.