This video gets you a full-width search panel that slides down from a magnifier icon in the header and closes on the Escape key — built from Drupal's own search block, with no extra module.
It is a region, not a block
Solo declares a dedicated region in solo.info.yml with the machine name fixed_search_block and the label Fixed Search Block. Nothing renders until you put something in it, and what you put in it is core's ordinary Search form block.
What to do
- Go to Structure → Block layout, find Fixed Search Block, and place the Search form block there.
- Reload any page. The magnifier button appears in the header on its own — Solo's header template only prints that button when the region has content, so there is no separate switch to find.
- Back in theme settings, open Fixed Search Block Settings. The Search Configuration tab takes extra CSS classes; the Color Settings tab sets background, text, link and button colours for the panel.
What the panel does in the browser
The overlay is fixed to the top of the viewport at z-index 5000 and animates its height from zero over 400 ms. While it is shut it carries both aria-hidden="true" and inert, so a screen reader will not announce it and Tab will not land inside it. Opening it moves focus to the first field; Escape closes it at any point and returns focus to the button that opened it; Tab wraps between the first and last control while it is open. That behaviour is in the theme, not something you configure — which is the point of using it rather than hand-rolling an overlay. If accessible markup is what you are after, see building accessible Drupal themes with Solo.
One thing that surprises people
Solo hides the settings for any region that has no blocks in it. If you cannot find Fixed Search Block Settings on the theme settings page, the block is not placed yet. Solo itself runs on Drupal 10.1, 11 or 12 — the exact string in its info file is ^10.1 || ^11 || ^12. Download it from the Solo theme page.
Prefer a sub-theme configured properly the first time? That is Drupal theming — or get in touch and describe the site.
