Vanta Admin

Vanta Admin is a Django admin theme with a darker interface, tighter density, and a standalone structure that stays close to Django's admin template system.

It is designed to be portable and to avoid frontend runtime dependencies outside standard Django admin behavior. You still use Django admin; Vanta changes the shell, navigation, common controls, messages, and visual treatment so the admin feels more deliberate in everyday use.

What It Adds

• A cleaner admin layout with a fixed sidebar that remembers how you left it.
• A Vanta-styled object history page, so audit trails feel like part of the same admin interface.
• Change-form object tools that wrap below narrow headings, so actions stay usable on smaller screens.
• A redesigned admin landing page with a welcome message, a larger scrollable recent-activity panel, project placeholders, and compact system context.
• A sidebar navigation filter that lets users quickly narrow large admin menus by app or model name.
• Filter dropdown menus that fit their option text, keep labels on one line, and use clearer selected and hover states.
• A clear button for the sidebar navigation filter, so users can reset large admin menus quickly.
• A resizable desktop sidebar that remembers each user's preferred width in the browser.
• A sidebar expand/collapse-all control for quickly opening or closing visible navigation sections.
• Draggable sidebar app sections, so users can reorder admin navigation categories in their own browser with a clearer drag preview and drop position.
• Keyboard-accessible sidebar section reordering with Arrow Up, Arrow Down, Home, and End on the reorder handle, plus Escape to cancel a drag.
• Light and dark mode, using the same calm Vanta look across the admin.
• A more settled light-mode palette with clearer search focus states and stronger changelist table headers.
• Less visual noise on the main admin screens, login pages, cards, filters, and two-factor auth pages.
• Denser dashboards, tables, filters, messages, and forms so admin work feels easier to scan.
• Better edit pages for longer admin forms, with save buttons that stay easier to reach while scrolling.
• Cleaner buttons for saving, deleting, viewing history, and changing passwords.
• Clearer form errors on admin pages, login, and two-factor auth screens.
• Admin messages that appear clearly, pause while hovered, and dismiss themselves after a short time, with a Vanta-styled manual close button.
• A recent-activity dashboard that keeps Today and Yesterday visible and explains when either period has no activity.
• Changelist actions that appear only when rows are selected, stay available while scrolling, include a clear cancel button, and use a more deliberate sticky action-bar treatment.
• Changelist filters that open from a compact toolbar button instead of taking a permanent right-side column.
• Active-filter indicators in the toolbar, including a count when filters are applied.
• An enhanced horizontal selector for many-to-many admin fields, with category grouping, item filtering, selected counts, and add/remove visible controls.
• Cleaner inline admin formsets, including compact tabular rows, stacked inline panels, and Vanta-styled delete controls.
• A clear-search control for changelist search forms that removes the current search while preserving the rest of the list state.
• More complete enhanced relationship controls, including a give-all action for grouped many-to-many selectors.
• Styled select controls for common admin dropdowns, plus a clearer enhanced horizontal selector for many-to-many fields.
• Themed Django date and time picker popups, so built-in calendar and clock controls no longer drop back to stock admin styling.
• Vanta-styled changelist pagination with result summaries, previous and next controls, and a direct page jump.
• Built-in icons for common admin areas, models, and recent actions.
• A cleaner account menu with display preferences, project links, password access, 2FA settings, logout, and a Vanta support link.
• A 12-hour and 24-hour time-format preference for changelist date/time values, stored in the browser for each admin user.
• A small, normal, and large font-size preference for the admin interface, stored in the browser for each admin user.
• More consistent changelist date formatting for Django's full and abbreviated month names.
• Simpler breadcrumbs on edit pages, so the page path feels less cluttered.
• A packaged favicon for the admin.
• A mobile sidebar overlay that makes the admin easier to use on smaller screens.
• Optional matching templates for django-two-factor-auth login, setup completion, account security, disable confirmation, and backup-token screens.

Vanta Admin does not replace Django admin, change your permissions, or configure two-factor authentication for you. If your project uses django-two-factor-auth, Vanta provides matching templates and CSS for the visible 2FA screens.

Tested With

Vanta Admin supports:

• Python 3.12 and 3.13
• Django 6.0 and 6.1

All four combinations are covered by the compatibility test matrix.

Django 6.1 uses Django's native Content Security Policy nonce support. Django 6.0 remains fully supported without nonce attributes and renders form assets normally.

Installation

PyPI with pip

pip install vanta-admin

PyPI with uv

uv add vanta-admin

Directly from GitHub with pip

pip install "git+https://github.com/oli-dev0/vanta-admin-theme.git@main"

Directly from GitHub with uv

uv add "git+https://github.com/oli-dev0/vanta-admin-theme.git@main"

Updating

With uv

From your project root, resolve the newest Vanta Admin release and sync the environment:

uv lock --upgrade-package vanta-admin
uv sync

This works with the normal constraint created by uv add vanta-admin. If you have deliberately pinned an exact Vanta Admin version, update that pin first.

With pip

pip install --upgrade vanta-admin

Django Setup

In your Django settings file, add vanta_admin to INSTALLED_APPS before django.contrib.admin so its templates override the default admin templates.

This is usually in settings.py, or in your project's active settings module if you split settings across multiple files:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'vanta_admin',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    # ...
]

Then run your normal static asset flow for Django:

python manage.py collectstatic

Optional Two-Factor Auth Theme Support

If your project already uses django-two-factor-auth, place vanta_admin before the two-factor apps and before django.contrib.admin so Vanta's templates are found first:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'vanta_admin',
    'django_otp',
    'django_otp.plugins.otp_static',
    'django_otp.plugins.otp_totp',
    'two_factor',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    # ...
]

Configure django-two-factor-auth normally in your project URLs and settings. Vanta only provides the theme layer.

Notes

• The package name on PyPI is vanta-admin.
• The Django app label you add to INSTALLED_APPS is vanta_admin.
• Two-factor auth support is visual/template support for projects that already install and configure django-two-factor-auth.
• Vanta keeps Django admin server-rendered. It does not add a frontend runtime or a custom dashboard framework.

Links

• Website: https://vanta-admin.org/
• Repository: https://github.com/oli-dev0/vanta-admin-theme
• Issues: https://github.com/oli-dev0/vanta-admin-theme/issues