A theme sets the appearance (colours, fonts, heading styles, block shapes, icons etc) for your Totara Learn site via HTML, CSS and javascript. A theme can be applied to the site, user, course, or category level and (where responsive) can be used on different web-enabled devices.
A custom theme can not only change the appearance of your Totara Learn significantly, it can be branded and styled to look similar to your organisation's website or other systems you use internally. You can read more guidance on developing themes for Totara Learn in the developer documentation.
Totara Learn also has a number of in-built themes which can be enabled and (depending on your selected theme) customised by a Site administrator.
The Standard Totara responsive, Custom Totara responsive, bootstrap base, and Kiwifruit responsive themes have been deprecated in Totara Learn v9 and will be removed in Totara Learn v10. You can read more in the Totara Learn developer documentation.
(This video is taken from the Dashboards and basic theming course on the Totara Academy, where you can access more resources and learning materials - including other videos).
Element library
The Element library contains a set of sample elements that are used on your Totara site, this is useful to ensure that everything has been correctly themed. You can reach the element library from the Administration block by going to Site Administration > Appearance > Themes > Element Library.
There are options for a number of theme areas, including toolbars, flexible icons, and a pattern library. There is more information for flexible icons in the developer documentation.
The Totara Academy has a whole course dedicated to using Dashboards and basic theming in Totara Learn. Here you can learn more on how to adjust your site's appearance, see best practice, and give it a go yourself.
