Template Customization Overview

axum-admin renders its UI using MiniJinja, a Rust implementation of the Jinja2 template engine. All built-in templates are compiled into the binary, so the admin works out of the box with no files on disk — but you can override any of them at startup.

How Template Resolution Works

Templates are resolved in this priority order (highest to lowest):

Inline overrides — templates registered with .template(name, content)
Directory overrides — templates loaded from a directory via .template_dir(path)
Built-in templates — compiled into the binary at build time

When more than one .template_dir() call is made, later calls take precedence over earlier ones. Inline .template() calls always win regardless of order.

Templates are loaded once at startup. There is no runtime reloading.

Override Methods

`.template(name, content)`

Registers a single template by name from a string. Use this for small overrides or when you want to embed template content in your Rust source.

AdminApp::new()
    .template("home.html", include_str!("templates/my_home.html"))
    // ...

The name must match the built-in template filename exactly (e.g. "layout.html", "list.html"). You can also register entirely new template names for use with custom routes.

`.template_dir(path)`

Loads all .html files from a directory. Any filename that matches a built-in template overrides it; files with new names are added as additional templates.

AdminApp::new()
    .template_dir("templates/admin")
    // ...

Multiple directories can be registered. Later calls take precedence:

AdminApp::new()
    .template_dir("templates/base")    // lower priority
    .template_dir("templates/custom")  // higher priority
    // ...

Built-in Template Files

The following templates are compiled into the binary and can be overridden by name:

Template	Used for
`layout.html`	Outer HTML shell, sidebar, header
`home.html`	Dashboard / index page
`list.html`	Entity list page (search, filters, bulk actions)
`list_table.html`	The table portion of the list page (rendered via HTMX)
`form.html`	Create / edit form
`flash.html`	Flash message partial
`login.html`	Login page
`change_password.html`	Change password page
`users_list.html`	Built-in users management list
`user_form.html`	Built-in user create/edit form
`roles.html`	Built-in roles list
`role_form.html`	Built-in role create form
`role_edit_form.html`	Built-in role edit form
`forbidden.html`	403 forbidden page

Template Engine: MiniJinja

All templates use MiniJinja syntax, which is compatible with Jinja2:

{{ variable }} — output a variable
{% if condition %}...{% endif %} — conditionals
{% for item in list %}...{% endfor %} — loops
{% extends "layout.html" %} / {% block name %}...{% endblock %} — inheritance (used by built-in templates)
{% include "partial.html" %} — includes

The built-in templates use {% extends "layout.html" %} with a {% block content %} block. When overriding a page template (e.g. list.html), you can extend layout.html the same way.