[Plugin] Aurora Theme: I gave the Unraid web interface a modern makeover (dark & light)

Hi all,

I've been running Unraid for many years now and I really like it, but the web interface always felt a bit dated to me. So in my spare time I started building my own theme, and step by step it grew into a complete plugin. It's called Aurora Theme and I'd like to share it with you.

[Screenshot: Dashboard, dark]

It's more than new colours. I went through pretty much every page and redesigned the things that bugged me:

• The Dashboard is built from cards now, with a summary at the top (uptime, CPU, memory, array). Click a container and you get a small dialog with all its actions.

• On Main the disk tables got status dots, temperature chips and usage bars, and Array Operation is a set of cards. Parity check and mover show their progress live.

• The Docker list is more compact, with a WebUI button for every container and groups you can create yourself. When you edit a container, the ports are checked while you type.

• VMs can be expanded to show their disks, interfaces and snapshots. • Settings and Tools have a search field, and you can star the pages you use most.

• I also restyled Apps, the tool pages, the help texts, the dialogs and even the login page.

• There's a Stats tab with charts for CPU, memory, network and disks. It replaces Dynamix System Statistics, so please remove that one first.

You can choose between a top bar and a sidebar layout, and switch between dark and light with one click. It works on my phone too.

[Screenshots: light palette, sidebar layout, Docker, Array Operation]

How this was made

To be transparent: I'm a hobby programmer, not a professional developer. I made this project with the help of Claude, Anthropic's AI. The ideas, the design decisions and all the testing on my own server came from me. Claude helped me write a large part of the code and turn my ideas into a working plugin. Without it, a project this size wouldn't have been possible for me in my spare time. I still check every change on my server before I release it, and the full source code is public on GitHub, so anyone can see what the plugin does.

How to install

It isn't in Community Applications yet, so for now: go to Plugins → Install Plugin, paste this address and click Install:

https://github.com/Tunefish92/Aurora-Theme/releases/latest/download/Aurora-Theme.plg

You need Unraid 7.2 or newer. The theme follows your choice in Settings → Display Settings: Black gives you the dark look, White the light one. The other themes stay untouched.

The plugin's own settings are under Settings → User Utilities → Aurora Theme. Updates come from my GitHub releases. The plugin checks once an hour and updates itself; you can turn that off in its settings and use "Check for updates" instead.

If something breaks

Add ?aurora=off to any address (for example /Dashboard?aurora=off) and you have Unraid's normal look back in that browser. ?aurora=on brings the theme back.

Removing the plugin restores everything, including the login page. If you like to tweak things yourself, you can put your own CSS and JavaScript in /boot/config/plugins/Aurora-Theme/custom.css and custom.js. They survive updates.

Feedback

I've tested it on Unraid 7.3 together with Community Applications and Unassigned Devices, but I'm sure you'll find things I missed, especially with other plugins.

Please let me know here or open an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/Tunefish92/Aurora-Theme/issues

The plugin's settings page can prefill an issue for you, including your system details. Screenshots help a lot.

Source code:

GitHub

(MIT licence)

Thanks for reading, and have fun with it!

Tunefish

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by Tunefish