Double Youpï Refined Admin Dashboard – Admin Theme with Dark Mode & Media Folders
by Double Youpï
Double Youpï Refined Admin Dashboard (RAD) is a free WordPress plugin, with no Pro version, that redraws the whole admin in dark or light using WordPress’s own components, so your other plugins keep working. It includes Refined Media Library (RML), which adds folders and collections to the media library.
You get a menu you can reorder, every notice in one place, a dashboard per role and a media library with folders. Deactivating it brings the admin back as it was.
The admin is where you spend your days: a sidebar that every plugin adds a line to, a dashboard full of widgets nobody reads. It might as well be pleasant.
The 4-minute film, shot on the real interface:
A dark theme that actually arrives dark
- Dark by default, light on demand, switched from the admin bar. Your choice is remembered and applied before the first paint, so you never see the old interface flash past.
- One design system across every screen. Tables, forms, metaboxes, notices, tabs, buttons and fields all speak the same language.
- Your accent colour, picked once. Text contrast against it is computed for you, so it stays readable whatever you choose.
- Your logo, in the admin and on the login screen.
- Contrast meets WCAG AA in both themes, every control has a name for screen readers, and no text is smaller than 11px.
A sidebar you can finally organise
- Menu entries are grouped into themed lines rather than piled up in one long list.
- The rail is resizable and collapsible, and remembers how you left it.
- A second bar shows the sub-pages and the useful tabs of the current screen, so you stop going back and forth.
- An editor lets you reorder, move, hide, promote or demote any entry, without touching code. Menu entries from newly installed plugins go to the section that fits them best, and are listed in the Developer tab so you can move them.
A dashboard you compose
- Arrange widgets by dragging them, add headings and text, save the layout under a name.
- Assign a default layout per role, and let each person adjust their own.
- Ready-made presets if you would rather not start from a blank page.
Every notice in one place
Plugins compete for the top of your screen. All those notices are collected into a single counter, opened when you want them. Action feedback still appears immediately, as a brief toast, because that one you asked for.
Reimagined lists and editor
- List tables keep every native action and every action your plugins add, deduplicated and shown on hover instead of stacked under each row.
- The classic post editor gets the same care, canvas included.
A media library with folders
Redrawing the admin and leaving the Media screen alone would have been a strange promise, so it is not the one made here.
- Folders and collections, by drag and drop. A file can sit in one folder and in as many collections as you like.
- A detail panel that opens beside the grid rather than over it, with the fields you actually edit.
- Where a file is used, before you delete it.
- WebP and AVIF generated on upload, and alt text filled from the filename when it is missing.
- Coming from FileBird, Real Media Library, HappyFiles or another folder plugin? Your folders are imported in one click, and nothing is deleted.
- Folders, collections and WebP/AVIF copies are available to headless fronts through WPGraphQL and the REST API.
This is the whole of Double Youpï Refined Media Library, a free plugin of ours that is also published on its own. Same folders, same collections, same settings: if you already run it, activate this one and everything is where you left it. If you only ever wanted the media library, that plugin on its own is the right choice.
Made for sites you hand over
- Keep Double Youpï settings to yourself: other administrators keep the redesigned admin, without its settings.
- Hide the Feedback button and review requests in one click.
- The rail only shows each account the pages it can open.
It steps aside when it should
Some plugins manage their own interface. When one of them owns the screen, this plugin stops theming it rather than fighting for control. Page builders, and anything that ships a full admin of its own, are left alone.
Learn more
Documentation and news: doubleyoupi.com/plugins/refined-admin-dashboard.
Contributing
The code of every release is on GitHub: github.com/double-youpi/refined-admin-dashboard. Found a bug? Open an issue there. Questions and help requests stay on the support forum here.
External services
This plugin sends a report to doubleyoupi.com when you use the “Send feedback” tab, and only then. Nothing is sent while you use the admin, and nothing is sent in the background.
When it happens. Only when you open the feedback tab, write a message and tick the consent box. The dialog shows you the exact report before it leaves.
What is sent. Your message and, if you attached one, your screenshot. The title and address of the admin screen you were on, with any token removed. The plugin or theme that screen belongs to. Version numbers for WordPress, PHP, your theme and this plugin. Your browser’s user agent string and window size. A site identifier that is a truncated one-way hash of your site address, so reports from one install can be grouped without knowing which site it is. If, and only if, you ask for a reply, your email address and your site address.
What is never sent. No posts, pages, media files, users, passwords or database content.
Reports are kept for 24 months, then deleted, screenshot included. You can ask for access, correction or deletion at any time.
Service provider: Double Youpï, https://doubleyoupi.com
Terms of use: https://doubleyoupi.com/terms
Privacy policy: https://doubleyoupi.com/privacy
Screenshots
The post list, redrawn. The menu became a rail of seven sections, with a second bar for the sub-pages of the screen you are on.
The same screen in light. Your choice is remembered and applied before the first paint, so the old interface never flashes past.
Hover a row and its actions line up beside the title: the native ones and those your plugins add, each shown once.
Reorganise the navigation by dragging: move entries between sections, hide them, promote a sub-page to the top level.
Hovering a section of the rail shows its pages, so any screen is one click away.
Compose the dashboard: drag the widgets, name the layout, assign one per role.
Every notice from WordPress and your plugins, collected in one place instead of stacking above the page.
The editor follows suit, custom fields included: your accent, your contrast, native components only.
Your plugins get the same treatment. WooCommerce here, with every native and third-party row action kept.
One accent colour and your logo. The text contrast against your colour is computed for you, so it stays readable.
Your logo and name on the login screen, in the same design as the admin.
The media library comes included: folders and collections on the left, a filter by file type, the redrawn grid on the right.
Click a file and its panel opens beside the grid, with the preview, the folder, the collections and the fields you edit.
Find the files nothing uses. Posts, pages, featured images and custom fields are checked first, and deleting sends files to the trash.
Coming from FileBird or another folder plugin? Preview its folders, then import them in one click. The source plugin is never modified.