Hide Stark from the Appearance page UI

Created on 1 August 2025, about 2 months ago

Problem/Motivation

We explicitly tell people not to use Stark as a base theme for building their websites. In the description for the Stark theme, we link to the Theming Guide instead. With this being the case, it's probably worth hiding Stark by default from the Appearance page UI.

This is a follow up to 📌 Discourage use of Stark as a base theme (and possibly mark it internal or hidden) Needs work

Steps to reproduce

Go to admin/appearance. Start is an available theme to enable, but we have a note asking people not to use it.

Proposed resolution

Add the hidden attribute to the stark.info.yml file so it's hidden by default.

User interface changes

Start will no longer show up on the Appearance page UI

Release notes snippet

Stark has been removed from the Appearance page UI. This is because we explicitly mention in the Stark description that the point of Stark is to demo our HTML and that it should not be used as a base theme.

If you need to enable Stark via the UI you can remove the hidden flag from the stark.info.yml file.

📌 Task
Status

Active

Version

11.0 🔥

Component

Stark theme

Created by

🇮🇪Ireland markconroy

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Comments & Activities

  • Issue created by @markconroy
  • Pipeline finished with Failed
    about 2 months ago
    #563054
  • Pipeline finished with Failed
    about 2 months ago
    Total: 691s
    #563071
  • 🇮🇳India chakkche

    @markconroy in some of the tests default install theme is Stark. Should we change it to Claro or Olivero as default install theme.

  • 🇬🇧United Kingdom longwave UK

    Stark is perhaps useful for the tests as the markup is very simple, maybe we just need to install the theme in a different way in these tests (unless the tests are testing the theme installer itself)

  • Pipeline finished with Failed
    about 2 months ago
    Total: 683s
    #563402
  • 🇮🇳India chakkche

    @longwave We're observing that the Stark theme is being installed in the backend; however, we are hiding it from the Appearance page in the Admin UI. As a result, browser tests such as BlockTest, BlockHiddenRegionTest, ThemeTest, and a few others are failing because they rely on Stark theme-related text that is no longer visible in the UI.

  • 🇮🇪Ireland markconroy

    @chakkche Let's keep Stark as the theme we want to use for the tests. But update the tests.

    Also, let's have a read of the linked issue that this issue was spun off from to see some of the approaches that have been made towards this already. 📌 Discourage use of Stark as a base theme (and possibly mark it internal or hidden) Needs work

  • Pipeline finished with Failed
    26 days ago
    Total: 595s
    #579042
  • 🇮🇪Ireland markconroy

    @chakkche it looks like there are still a number of failing tests, such as:

    testUninstallingThemes()
    InvalidArgumentException: Input "admin_theme" cannot take "stark" as a value (possible values: "", "claro", "olivero").
    
    AddedStylesheets
    The link Set Stark as default theme was not found on the page.
    
    StandardPerformanceTest
    Failed asserting that two arrays are identical.
    
    Drupal\Tests\navigation\FunctionalJavascript\Performance
    Failed asserting that two arrays are identical.
    

    I wonder should we leave Stark as an available theme on the Appearance page, or should we update these tests? Given the point of Stark, it looks like the tests should remain as is and use it, but I'm not sure how to get around that being the case _and also_ hiding it from the Appearance page.

  • 🇧🇪Belgium borisson_ Mechelen, 🇧🇪
  • 🇮🇳India chakkche

    @markconroy i suggest we create a test_functional_appearance theme in system and extend stark as base theme and use it as replacement in all the tests wherever stark is still needed.

  • Pipeline finished with Failed
    23 days ago
    Total: 657s
    #580669
  • Pipeline finished with Failed
    23 days ago
    Total: 1262s
    #580712
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