authentik/website/docs/sys-mgmt/brands.md

---
title: Brands
slug: /brands
---

As an authentik administrator, you can customize your instance's appearance and behavior using brands. Brands apply to a single domain, a domain wildcard, or can be set as default, in which case the brand will be applied when no other brand matches the domain.

For an overview of branding and other customization options in authentik refer to [Customize your instance](../customize/index.md).

## Create or edit a brand

To create or edit a brand, follow these steps:

1. Log in as an administrator, open the authentik Admin interface, and navigate to **System** > **Brands**.

2. Click **Create** to add a new brand, or click the **Edit** icon next to an existing brand to modify it.

3. Define the configurations in the following settings:

### Branding settings

The brand settings define the visual identity of the brand, including:

- **Branding title**: Displayed in the browser tab (document title) and throughout the UI;
- **Logo**: Appears in the sidebar/header;

    :::info
    Starting with authentik 2024.6.2, the placeholder `%(theme)s` can be used in the logo configuration option, which will be replaced with the active theme.
    :::

- **Favicon**: Shown on the browser tab.
- **Default flow background** :ak-version[2025.4]: Default background image for the flow executor, can be overridden per flow, see [Flow configuration options](../add-secure-apps/flows-stages/flow/index.md#flow-configuration-options).
- **Custom CSS** :ak-version[2025.4]: Add custom CSS to further customize the look of authentik. Creating such a file is outside the scope of this document.

### External user settings

You can configure authentik to redirect external users to a default application after they log in (if they weren't originally redirected from a specific application). To do this:

1. Open the authentik Admin interface and navigate to **System** > **Brands**.
2. Click the **Edit** icon for the relevant brand.
3. Under **External user settings** select a **Default application**.

### Default flows

You can explicitly select, in your instance's Brand settings, the _default flows_ to use for the current brand. You can optionally configure these default flows ([learn more about each default flow](../add-secure-apps/flows-stages/flow/examples/default_flows.md)):

- **Authentication** flow: the flow used to authenticate users. If left empty, the first applicable flow sorted by the slug is used.
- **Invalidation flow**: for typical use cases, select the `default-invalidation-flow` (Logout) flow. This flow logs the user out of authentik when the application session ends (user logs out of the app).
- **Recovery flow**: if set, the user can access an option to recover their login credentials.
- **Unenrollment flow**: if set, users are able to unenroll themselves using this flow. If no flow is set, option is not shown.
- **User settings flow**: if set, users are able to configure details of their profile.
- **Device code flow**: if set, the OAuth Device Code profile can be used, and the selected flow will be used to enter the code.

If a default flow is _not_ set in the brand, then authentik selects any flow that:

    - matches the required designation
    - comes first sorted by slug
    - is allowed by policies

This means that if you want to select a default flow based on policy, you can leave the brand default empty.

## Other global settings

#### Web Certificate

The **Web Certificate** option can be used to configure which certificate authentik uses when its accessed directly via HTTPS (via port 9443).

#### Client Certificates:ak-version[2025.4]

When using the [Mutual TLS Stage](../add-secure-apps/flows-stages/stages/mtls/index.md) and accessing authentik directly, this option configures which certificate authorities clients' certificates can be issued by.

#### Attributes

Attributes such as locale, theme settings (light/dark mode), and custom attributes can be set to a per-brand default value here. Any custom attributes can be retrieved via [`group_attributes()`](../users-sources/user/user_ref.mdx#object-properties).