Sydney Header Not Showing: Hero Settings, Legacy Headers and Phones

Sydney uses the word header for two different things

In Sydney's Customizer, the menu bar is the header and lives in the Header panel on newer installs. The large image, video or slider under it is the hero, set in the Hero area panel, yet its controls are labeled Front page header type and Site header type. Owners who say the header vanished usually mean one of these, and the fix depends on which. So before anything else, look at the broken page and decide: is the logo and menu gone, or the picture under it?

• Menu bar gone everywhere: a header system change, an empty builder layout or a theme file override in a child theme.
• Menu bar gone on one page: a page template or page builder template on that page.
• Menu bar gone on phones only: the Tablet/Mobile layout is empty, or page content is sitting on top of it.
• Hero gone everywhere: the Hero type settings, or an empty Header Media section.
• Hero gone on phones and tablets only: the image swap Sydney performs at 1,024 pixels, covered below.
• Header there but blank or the wrong color: transparent or sticky settings, or custom CSS fighting them.

Hero type settings that hide the big image on purpose

Open Customizer, Hero area, Hero type. Two radio controls decide what sits under the menu: Front page header type for the home page and Site header type for every other page. Each offers Full screen slider, Image, Video and No header (only menu). The defaults are the trap. In the 2.71 code, a site using the modern header defaults both to No header, while an old legacy-header site defaults inner pages to Image. A theme switch, a starter-site import or a header upgrade can therefore change what you see without anyone touching the hero.

Each setting covers a whole class of pages, so if only one inner page is affected, look at that page instead. The slider also has speed costs worth knowing before you turn it back on; our Sydney speed guide explains why a single image usually serves the front page better.

Shows on a laptop, gone on a phone: the 1,024-pixel image swap

This one surprises people, and it comes straight from the theme's code. When the hero type is Image, Sydney's custom-header.php prints a style rule that sets your photo as the background of the hero box. Inside a media query for 1,024 pixels and narrower, the same rule removes that background, sets the box height to auto and switches on a separate inline image element. In the 2.71 header template, that inline image is printed only on a WooCommerce shop page without its own featured image. On every other page, phones and tablets get an empty box of no height.

The wordpress.org forum has the owner's side of this: after a Sydney update, header images stopped appearing on tablets and phones, and the suggested fix was a short rule in Additional CSS, scoped to 1,024 pixels and below, that puts the background image back on the .header-image box and gives it a height. That works, but it is your rule to maintain through every update. The cleaner fix is to set the hero to No header and build the opening image in the block editor or Elementor with a real image element, which also loads faster.

When the menu bar is the part that went missing

Legacy header, builder header, and the switch between them

Sites still on Sydney's legacy version 1 header have no Header Builder in the Customizer. Support enables the builder with a snippet that turns on the hf-builder module, and Sydney's own retired upgrade notice warned that existing header and footer customizations would be lost. In a recent forum thread the switch left the owner's header uneditable and the footer gone. Another report describes builder options missing on a fresh install, unresolved when we checked on October 6, 2026. If your header changed shape the day someone pasted that snippet, this is why.

An empty Tablet/Mobile layout

The builder keeps separate Desktop and Tablet/Mobile layouts, and aThemes' documentation says the mobile one does not inherit desktop components. A header designed on a laptop can reach phones with nothing in it. Open the Tablet/Mobile tab and add a logo and a Menu Toggle. If the menu bar exists but will not open, our Sydney mobile menu guide takes over.

Elementor templates and page templates

Elementor's Canvas template prints only Elementor content, with no theme header at all. Sydney's own page template called Sydney Canvas sounds similar but still loads the theme header, so it is rarely the culprit. An Elementor Pro Theme Builder header replaces Sydney's header wherever its display conditions match, and shows nowhere if it is still a draft or its conditions were narrowed. Sydney Pro adds display conditions to some header features, such as the transparent header. In an older forum case, Elementor content positioned too high covered the header on phones. Builder-side fixes are collected under Elementor repair.

Printed but invisible: transparent rows and the 2.69 sticky report

Sometimes the header is in the page source and nobody can see it. The builder's Transparent Options place the header over the content, and the theme's own description adds that you must make each row's background transparent by hand. Rows have a separate Background Color (transparent mode) control. Get those wrong and white text sits on a white section. Pages also carry a Transparent menu bar checkbox in the Sydney page options box, which applies the effect to that page alone and is easy to forget.

Sticky headers add a second state. After updating to 2.69, one owner's sticky header changed background color as the page scrolled, and rolling back to 2.68 cured it. aThemes could not reproduce it. Another owner in the same thread traced a similar color shift to their own Additional CSS forcing colors. Check your custom CSS before rolling back, and read Sydney CSS not updating if a color change refuses to appear.

Bringing back the Sydney header on a copy first

1. 1

   Name the missing piece

   Menu bar or hero, everywhere or one page, all devices or phones only. Write it down.

2. 2

   Copy the site to staging

   Header changes are visible to every visitor at once. Make them where nobody is watching.

3. 3

   Check Hero type

   Customizer, Hero area, Hero type. Set Front page header type and Site header type to what you expect, and confirm the Header Media section holds an image if you chose Image.

4. 4

   Test the hero at phone width

   Inspect the header-image box on a phone. If it is zero pixels tall, decide between a scoped CSS rule and rebuilding the hero as an image block.

5. 5

   Confirm the header system

   Look for the Header Builder under the Header panel. If it is missing, you are on the legacy header; do not switch systems on the live site.

6. 6

   Check the Tablet/Mobile layout

   Add a logo and Menu Toggle to the mobile rows if they are empty.

7. 7

   Check the page and its template

   On a single broken page, look at its template, its Transparent menu bar checkbox and any Elementor Theme Builder header conditions.

8. 8

   Purge and verify logged out

   Clear page, host and CDN caches, then check desktop, tablet and phone in a private window.

Writing down who owns the top of each page

Header problems repeat on Sydney because several systems can claim the same strip of pixels: the theme's header generation, the builder's desktop and mobile layouts, the hero settings, per-page checkboxes, Elementor templates and Pro display conditions. Keep a one-page note of which system owns the header, which owns the hero, and which pages are exceptions. It saves an hour the next time something moves.

• Update Sydney on staging and look at the header on a phone before pushing, the lesson of the 2.69 sticky report.
• Keep custom header CSS in one place, commented with the reason it exists.
• Avoid two header owners on one page, such as a Sydney header and an Elementor Pro header with overlapping conditions.
• Our hosting and maintenance plans include tested updates, so surprises land on a copy.

The cross-theme version of this hunt is in WordPress header not showing, and our Sydney review sets the theme's header history in context.

A header that needs a custodian

The top of a website is the one part every visitor sees. On a Sydney site it is decided by a hero setting with surprising defaults, a phone stylesheet that removes your photo, three header generations and a page builder that can override them all. Each piece is reasonable alone. Together they need someone to keep track.

In a Next.js build the header and hero are components in one codebase, sized for phones on purpose and reviewed before every deploy. That costs more up front and layout changes need a developer. Sydney vs Next.js sets out the trade, and Sydney to Next.js explains how a move keeps your URLs. To keep Sydney and have the header fixed instead, our theme repair team works on staging. Other guides are in the troubleshooting section.