Universal Theme Updates in Oracle APEX 26.1
Rodrigo is a Senior Oracle Developer at QV Systems. He is an experienced software engineer with emphasis in analysis, design and development of bespoke Oracle applications utilising development tools such as APEX, PL / SQL, jQuery, javaScript, CSS and JSON for a variety of international businesses. Rodrigo speaks regularly at Oracle community events and enjoys creating APEX plugins and writing blogs.
APEX 26.1 has been updated to the Universal Theme. While much of the attention in this release is on AI features, I think the UT improvements are just as important for developers like me who care about building clean, modern, and maintainable APEX apps.
The first thing that stood out to me was the new Iris style. It gives applications a fresher Oracle-branded look and makes the default UI feel more modern straight away. If you are not seeing the new style, you are probably seeing the message below. Just click Refresh Theme.
New template components and some changes to Template Components. They were enhanced with partial client-side support, allowing parts of a component to be rendered or reused more flexibly on the client side. Another change is the addition of autocomplete support, which makes it easier to create template attributes.
The Font APEX now has more icons. It may seem small compared to some of the headline features in 26.1, but having better icon support does make a considerable difference in day-to-day development.
Template Directives were also expanded in 26.1 and can now be used more broadly across item, region, list, and page templates. For me, that is a big practical improvement in this release because it gives developers greater flexibility to build reusable, consistent UI patterns.
Oracle also reported general bug fixes and theme refresh improvements.
