Swish Admin

A modern reimagining of the WordPress admin UI, built on the design system of TailAdmin (free Tailwind CSS dashboard template).

All native WordPress functionality is preserved — Swish Admin only changes the UI/UX. Every menu registered by core or by any plugin remains reachable: the sidebar is built live from the real $menu / $submenu globals, and core screens are restyled in place rather than replaced.

Features

• TailAdmin-style sidebar replacing the classic admin menu — including plugin menus, update/comment count badges, dashicons and custom plugin icons, and collapsible submenus.
• Modern top bar replacing the admin toolbar: menu search (⌘K / Ctrl+K), dark-mode toggle, view-site link, a "+ New" quick-create dropdown, and a user menu with avatar.
• Dark mode, persisted per browser via localStorage.
• Restyled core screens: list tables become cards, buttons, form fields, notices, postboxes, dashboard widgets, nav tabs, pagination and the footer all follow the TailAdmin design tokens.
• Responsive: off-canvas sidebar with overlay below 1024px.
• Multisite aware: works in the network admin, with quick switching between network and site admin in the sidebar footer.

Implementation notes

TailAdmin's design system (its exact color/typography/shadow tokens and component styling) was ported to dependency-free CSS custom properties instead of shipping the template's Tailwind/webpack build. Tailwind's preflight reset would break core admin styles; this approach reskins wp-admin safely with zero build step and zero JS dependencies.

Escape hatches

• Append ?swish-admin=off to any admin URL to view that screen with the native UI.
• The swish_admin_enabled filter can disable the reskin programmatically.
• The Customizer keeps its own UI.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5+ (tested on 7.0)
• PHP 7.4+

Credits

• UI design: TailAdmin free Tailwind dashboard template

License

GPL-2.0-or-later