Installation & Setup

Requirements

Drupal 10.3+ or 11.x
PHP 8.3+
ui_patterns ^2.0, ui_icons ^1.1, ui_styles ^1.11, ui_skins ^1.1 (hard dependencies, exactly as composer.json pins them at 5.0.0-alpha6)

ui_icons 2.x will not install with this theme. ui_icons 2.0.0 shipped on 2026-08-03 and requires Drupal 11.3+, but ui_suite_daisyui still pins ^1.1 in its composer.json — verified on 2026-09-01 against both the installed theme and the 5.0.0-alpha6 tag. Composer refuses the combination; there is no flag that makes it work. Stay on ui_icons 1.x until the theme widens the constraint. The 2.0.0 release removed the icon setting type that gave UI Patterns 1.x back-compatibility and dropped every procedural function in favour of #[Hook] classes, so this is a real major, not a version-number formality. - ui_styles 1.11+, ui_skins 1.1+ (recommended, not required since alpha6)

Installation

composer require 'drupal/ui_suite_daisyui:^5.0@alpha'

This pulls in all required dependencies. Then enable:

# Hard dependencies -- the theme's info.yml refuses to install without these.
drush en ui_patterns ui_icons ui_icons_patterns

# The admin browsers the verification step below uses. Neither is a theme
# dependency, so nothing enables them for you.
drush en ui_patterns_library ui_styles_library

# Layout Builder integration -- without this submodule NO component appears
# in the "Choose a layout" dialog, grids included.
drush en ui_patterns_layouts

# Optional but recommended:
drush en ui_styles_block ui_skins
drush theme:enable ui_suite_daisyui
drush config:set system.theme default ui_suite_daisyui

Post-Installation Verification

After enabling the theme, verify these admin paths:

Path	Provided by	Purpose
`/admin/appearance/ui/components`	`ui_patterns_library`	Browse all 51 SDC components with live previews
`/admin/appearance/ui/styles`	`ui_styles_library`	Browse the 10 style plugins
`/admin/appearance/css-variables`	`ui_skins`	Configure 28 CSS variables
`/admin/appearance/settings/ui_suite_daisyui`	the theme itself	Theme settings, including the DaisyUI theme selector and the form display/label radios

Three of these four are submodule routes, not theme routes. A 404 means the module in the middle column is not enabled, not that the theme is broken.

Default Block Configuration

The theme ships with 10 optional block configs that auto-install when the theme is enabled:

Block	Region	Weight	Plugin
Site branding	`navbar_start`	-5	`system_branding_block`
Main navigation	`navbar_center`	-4	`system_menu_block:main`
User account menu	`navbar_end`	0	`system_menu_block:account`
Breadcrumbs	`content`	-6	`system_breadcrumb_block`
Page title	`content`	-5	`page_title_block`
Messages	`content`	-4	`system_messages_block`
Primary admin actions	`content`	-3	`local_actions_block`
Primary tabs	`content`	-2	`local_tasks_block` (primary)
Secondary tabs	`content`	-1	`local_tasks_block` (secondary)
Content	`content`	1	`system_main_block`

Common Mistakes

Enabling only the hard dependencies and expecting the admin UI -- ui_patterns, ui_icons and ui_icons_patterns are the theme's declared dependencies, so Drupal installs them for you; ui_patterns_library, ui_styles_library and ui_patterns_layouts are not, so nothing does. The components render fine without them -- you just cannot browse, style or place them. WHY: the theme depends on the rendering engine, not on the authoring tools built on top of it.
Enabling ui_styles but not ui_patterns_layouts and then hunting for grid layouts -- The "Choose a layout" dialog is populated by ui_patterns_layouts alone. Without it, Layout Builder shows only core's one/two/three-column layouts.
Using the 4.0.x branch -- The 4.0.x branch targets DaisyUI 4 and is minimally maintained. WHY: DaisyUI 5 has breaking class name changes, and the 5.0.x branch is the active development target.