Great news everyone! WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” was released today! This update has ~500 enhancements and ~400 bug fixes. Pretty excited to try them out. Here’s the info from the WordPress website:
“Lionel” marks a major chapter in the evolution of WordPress as a tool for expression. It’s the culmination of years of work from hundreds of contributors, bringing a more powerful and cohesive editing experience for crafting websites with blocks. It continues the quest of making web publishing approachable for everyone—so it’s also just a new beginning!
Do everything in the Site Editor
WordPress 6.3 brings your content, templates, and patterns together in the Site Editor for the first time. Add pages, browse style variations, create synced patterns, and enjoy fine-tuned control over navigation menus. Spend less time switching across different site areas—so you can focus on what matters most. Creation to completion, all in one place.
Preview Block themes
Experience block themes before you switch and preview the Site Editor, with options to customize directly before committing to a new theme.
Create and sync patterns
Arrange blocks and save them to the ‘My Patterns’ section for use throughout your site. You can even specify whether to sync your patterns (previously referred to as “Reusable blocks”) so that one change applies to all parts of your site. Or, utilize patterns as a starting point with the ability to customize each instance.
Work faster with the Command Palette
Switch to a specific template or open your editor preferences with a new tool that helps you quickly access expanded functionality. With simple keyboard shortcuts (⌘+k on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows), clicking the sidebar search icon in Site View, or clicking the Title Bar, get where you need to go and do what you need to do in seconds.
Sharpen your designs with new tools
New design controls bring more versatility for fine-tuning, starting with the ability to customize your captions from the Styles interface without coding. You can manage your duotone filters in Styles for supported blocks and pick from the options provided by your theme or disable them entirely. The Cover block gets added settings for text color, layout controls, and border options, making this powerful block even more handy.
Track design changes with Style revisions
With a new audit trail, you can now see how your site looked at a specific time. Visualize these revisions in a timeline and access a one-click option to restore prior styles.
Annotate with the Footnotes block
Footnotes add convenient annotations throughout your content. Now you can add and link footnotes for any paragraph.
Show or hide content with the Details block
Use the Details block to avoid spoiling a surprise, create an interactive Q&A section, or hide a long paragraph under a heading.
Performance gets a boost
WordPress 6.3 has 170+ performance updates, including defer and async support for the Scripts API and fetchpriority support for images. These improvements, along with block template resolution, image lazy-loading, and the emoji loader, can dramatically improve your website’s perceived load time.
Accessibility remains a core focus
Incorporating more than 50 accessibility improvements across the platform, WordPress 6.3 is more accessible than ever. Improved labeling, optimized tab and arrow-key navigation, revised heading hierarchy, and new controls in the admin image editor allow those using assistive technologies to navigate more easily.
Other highlights
Set aspect ratio on images
Specify your aspect ratios and ensure design integrity, especially when using images in patterns.
Build your site distraction-free
Distraction-free designing is now available in the Site Editor.
Rediscover the Top Toolbar
A revamped Top Toolbar offers parent selectors for nested blocks, options when selecting multiple blocks, and an interface embedded into the title bar with new functionality in mind.
List View improvements
Drag and drop to every content layer and delete any block you would like in the updated List View.
Build templates with Patterns
Create unique patterns to jumpstart template creation with a new modal enabling access to pattern selection.
Changes in PHP support
Support for PHP 5 is discontinued. The new minimum supported version of PHP is 7.0.0.
Failed update safeguards
WordPress will now auto-restore the previously installed version of plugins or themes if something goes wrong during a failed manual update.
