Templates and themes
Choosing a look, which templates your plan includes, and why the template travels with a duplicate.
A template decides how your CV looks: layout, typography, accent color, whether there is a sidebar.
Choose template opens the picker: every template on one side, each one drawn with your own content, and a full-size preview of the highlighted one beside it.
Plans
Your plan includes the default template. Upgrade to use every template.
The default template is on every plan and is a perfectly good CV. Locked templates are marked Available on paid plans rather than hidden, so you can see what you would get. You can preview a locked one; you just cannot choose it.
Choosing one
Highlighting a template previews it. Nothing changes until you press Choose this template, so you can work through all of them first and then take the one you want. Cancel, Escape, and clicking outside the picker all leave your CV on the template it started on.
Switching template changes nothing about your content. It is the same CV, laid out differently, and you can switch back.
A template with a sidebar behaves very differently with fifteen skills than with four, which is why the preview draws your CV rather than a sample one.
On a phone the picker shows one thing at a time: tap a template to see it, and use Back to return to the list. The buttons stay put at the bottom either way.
Accent color
Templates carry an accent. Keep it conservative for a CV going to a corporate client, where the document is being read next to twenty others and standing out on color is not the goal.
It travels with a duplicate
Duplicating a CV copies the layout and template along with the content. That is what makes duplicate-then-adjust a sensible way to build a second version for a different audience.
Printing and color
Templates with a colored sidebar or header need the print dialog set to edge-to-edge, and Steerd says so at the point it matters:
Tip: for edge-to-edge color, set Margins to "None" in the print dialog.
See Preview and exports.