23.1

What’s new in Gutenberg 23.1? (07 May)

“What’s new in Gutenberg…” posts (labeled with the #gutenberg-new tag) are posted following every Gutenberg release on a biweekly basis, showcasing new features included in each release. As a reminder, here’s an overview of different ways to keep up with Gutenberg and the Editor.

What’s New In Gutenberg 23.1?

Gutenberg 23.1 has been released and is available for download!

This release introduces two new experiments aimed at managing content inside the editor. A Custom Taxonomies management screen lets you create and edit taxonomies from Settings, and a new Media Editor brings better image manipulation into the WordPress media flow. Outside of the editor, the @wordpress/ui package gains new compound primitives, Drawer and Autocomplete, alongside overlay polish. Other changes include an experiment to hide the classic block from the inserter, parallel thumbnail uploads, an early developer preview of @wordpress/grid, and a batch of real-time collaboration reliability fixes.

• Faster image upload finalization

• @wordpress/ui primitives

• Other Notable Highlights

• Changelog Features

• Enhancements Components

• Post Editor

• Block Library

• Block Editor

• New APIs Guidelines

• Bug Fixes Block Library

• Components

• Block Editor

• Post Editor

• Client Side Media

• Collaboration

• Accessibility Connectors

• Components

• Performance Post Editor

• Experiments Media

• Block Library

• Post Editor

• Documentation

• Code Quality Components

• Block Library

• Post Editor

• Block Editor

• Site Editor

• Build Tooling

• Testing

• First-time contributors

• Contributors

Faster image upload finalization

Sideload requests for an image’s generated thumbnail sizes used to run sequentially within a single upload. They now run in parallel up to the existing concurrency limit, which speeds up upload completion. (#75888)

Video

The speed improvement is most noticeable on bulk uploads via the Gallery block, large images, and slower connections.

@wordpress/ui primitives

The @wordpress/ui package gains two new primitives and polish across overlay components.

Two new compound primitives ship in 23.1:

• Drawer, for slide-in side panels and bottom sheets. (#76690)

• Autocomplete, a low-level form primitive for combobox-style inputs. (#77642)

Other polish across overlay components:

• The Dialog component gains a new Description subcomponent, plus several tweaks to its spacing and typography to align it better with Drawer. Additionally, its Backdrop only dims the page when the Dialog is modal. (#77194)

• Dialog, AlertDialog, and Drawer now support sticky headers and footers when their content scrolls vertically. (#77559)

• All overlays *.Popup subcomponents gain a new portal prop which, combined with new optional *.Portal subcomponents, allows for better customization of the portaling behavior. (#77452)

Other Notable Highlights

• **Custom Taxonomies management (Experiment). **An experimental UI for managing custom taxonomies inside WordPress admin. With the “Content types: manage custom taxonomies” experiment enabled, a new Taxonomies screen lets you create, edit, activate or deactivate, and delete taxonomies without writing PHP. Enable it via Gutenberg → Experiments → “Content types: manage custom taxonomies”, then visit Settings → Taxonomies. (#77497, #77524, #77657, #77697)

• Image Editor with Freeform Cropper (Experiment). A new experimental Image Editor modal for image manipulation in the Block Editor. The modal enables freeform cropping and other manipulation tools for Image and Site Logo blocks. To test it out, enable the experiment via Gutenberg → Experiments → Media Editor Modal, then, in the editor, click on the Crop icon in the block toolbar. (#77479, #77537, #77540, #77585, #77641)

• Disable Classic Block from the inserter. The “Disable TinyMCE” experiment was refocused and landed to disable the Classic block from the inserter. The reason for the change is that removing TinyMCE everywhere broke too many existing flows. Existing Classic block instances continue to work normally, since the change only affects the inserter. A new wp_classic_block_supports_inserter filter was introduced to allow controlling this behavior. (#77747, #77838, #77840, #77845, #77911)

• @wordpress/grid package (developer preview). A new @wordpress/grid package introduces DashboardGrid, a two-dimensional grid component with drag-to-reorder and resize handles for dashboard-style surfaces. The package is in active development, and the API is expected to evolve in upcoming releases. (#77562)

• Real-time Collaboration reliability improvements. Several fixes improve RTC reliability and load behavior. The “Connection Lost” dialog no longer appears when a page registers more sync rooms than the server’s per-request cap. A client/server size-check mismatch that could reject large Yjs updates has been corrected. When two offline users reconnect and both push compactions, they no longer end up in a divergent state. Sync observers also attach after the persisted CRDT document is hydrated, which avoids redundant block re-parsing during editor load. (#77631, #77669, #77980, #77966)

Changelog

Features

• Upload Media: Enable concurrent sideload uploads. (75888)

• Experimental Image Cropper: Tweak the keyboard interactions with drag handles and canvas. (77639)

• Admin UI: Change default heading level from h2 to h1. (77617)

• Core Data: Remove redundant memoization wrapper from ‘getQueriedItems’. (77483)

• I18N: Polyfill script module translations for WordPress @danluu](https://profiles.wordpress.org/danluu/): RTC: Fix connection-lost error on large updates caused by mismatch between update size bounds check and expanded base64 update size. (77669)

• @hi0001234d: Connectors: Add role="list" wrapper to connector cards for valid ARIA structure. (77689)

• @rajanarahul93: Featured Image: Change toggle label to ‘Make image a link’. (71931)

• @vishnupprajapat: Taxonomies: Add spacing above Add Taxonomy modal actions. (77523)

• @wwahammy: TypeScript: Migrate keyboard-shortcuts to TS. (76287)

Contributors

The following contributors merged PRs in this release:

@adamsilverstein @Adi-ty @adithya-naik @aduth @alecgeatches @amitraj2203 @andrewserong @CGastrell @ciampo @danluu @DarkMatter-999 @dpmehta @ellatrix @glendaviesnz @gziolo @hbhalodia @hi0001234d @himanshupathak95 @jameskoster @jorgefilipecosta @joshualip-plaudit @jsnajdr @juanmaguitar @kraftbj @Mamaduka @manzoorwanijk @mcsf @mikachan @mirka @Mustafabharmal @ntsekouras @peterwilsoncc @R1shabh-Gupta @rajanarahul93 @ramonjd @retrofox @SainathPoojary @shrivastavanolo @simison @Soean @t-hamano @Takshil-Kunadia @tellthemachines @tyxla @USERSATOSHI @vishnupprajapat @westonruter @wwahammy @yogeshbhutkar @yuliyan @ZebulanStanphill

#block-editor, #core-editor, #gutenberg, #gutenberg-new