WordPress 6.4 Beta 1 was released today on schedule, led by an underrepresented gender release squad. It includes the last five releases of the Gutenberg plugin (16.2, 16.3, 16.4, 16.5, 16.6) along with the upcoming 16.7 release and 190 tickets for core.
If you are following Gutenberg development, many of these features have already been released in the plugin. The most notable highlights of features and improvements coming in 6.4 include the following:
- Font Management – allows users to manage a font library independent of their active theme, along with Font Face support for server-side
@font-facestyle generation and printing - Block Hooks – enables developers to automatically insert blocks into content relative to another block
- Lightbox for Images – core support for lightbox functionality for image blocks
- Expanded Design Tools – background images for Group blocks, aspect ratios for image placeholders, alignment settings for synced patterns, and more
- Command Palette updates – improved design, new commands, better consistency across existing commands
- List view enhancements – usability improvements allow for renaming Group blocks, viewing media previews for Gallery and Image blocks, and duplicating blocks with a keyboard shortcut
- New Twenty Twenty-Four default theme – a multipurpose block theme that will ship with a collection of templates and patterns that lend themselves to a wide variety of use cases. See a demo at 2024.wordpress.net.
WordPress 6.4 will also include many accessibility and performance improvements that will improve workflows and speed for all users of both Block and Classic Themes. A detailed testing guide is available that covers all the key features and how to test them, with video demos for each.
Beta 2 is expected on October 3. WordPress 6.4 will be the third major release of 2023, and is scheduled for November 7.