Update modules and themes

Modules and themes are frequently updated to fix bugs, add features, or patch security issues. Keeping them current avoids problems and provides the best experience for your users. This page applies extension updates through the Drupal CMS admin interface.

Goal

The contributed modules and themes on your site updated to their latest releases through the admin UI.

Prerequisites

• A hosting provider that supports applying updates through the UI. To verify, go to Reports → Status report/admin/reports/status and find the Update readiness checks item. It should report “Your site is ready for automatic updates”.
• A backup strategy; see Back up your site.
• A test or staging environment (optional, but recommended) to check for compatibility before updating your live site.
• The Administer software updates and View software update notifications permissions.

Steps

Check for updates

1. Go to Reports → Available updates/admin/reports/updates. Select Check manually if you need to refresh the list.
2. Scan the status labels: each module and theme is marked Up to date, Update available, or Security update required!. Apply security updates as soon as possible.

Make a backup

Back up your site before applying any updates.

Apply the updates

1. Select the Update extensions tab at the top of the page.
2. Select the extensions you want to update, then select Update to begin the process.
3. Drupal CMS verifies the updates can be applied, then asks you to confirm that the process can not be reversed. Toggle the confirmation switch, then select Continue.

Commit the changed files

Applying updates modifies your project’s Composer files. If your site uses Git for version control, commit the changes to composer.json and composer.lock.

Verify

When the updates complete, Drupal CMS redirects you back to the Available updates report and displays an Update complete! status message. The extensions you updated are now marked Up to date.

If an update fails, the errors appear on the page. Resolve the errors, then revert to the backup version of your site and try again.

Variations

Update with Composer

When you apply updates through the UI, Drupal CMS uses the Composer dependency management tool in the background. You can also use the Composer CLI directly to manage updates, which some teams prefer; see updating contributed modules and themes with Composer in the Drupal user guide.

Related

• How updates work in Drupal CMS explains security and regular updates and the ways to apply them.
• Update Drupal core applies the same process to core patch releases.
• Install modules covers adding new extensions rather than updating them.