“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 21.6?

Gutenberg 21.6 has been released and is available for download!

It brings several enhancements, including improvements to the new Accordion block and the Dataviews grid. This release also incorporates various bug fixes and code refactoring, continuing the migration to TypeScript. Additionally, it lays the groundwork for a future upgrade to React 19.

  1. New add accordion button
  2. Improved Dataviews grid interface.
  3. Select, dropdown and text inputs now support global styles.
  4. Changelog

New “add” accordion button

A new “add” button has been incorporated into the accordion block, simplifying the process of creating new content items by allowing direct additions to the accordion toolbar.

Improved Dataviews grid interface.

The dataviews grid now offers a cleaner interface. Titles can be hidden, and actions are accessible on hover, allowing for a simplified grid without sacrificing the ability to add actions to individual items.

Select, dropdown and text inputs now support global styles

This release brings global styles support to selects, dropdowns, and text inputs, giving themes consistent control over these common form elements. By defining styles in theme.json, authors can customize colors, borders, and typography without extra CSS. This update makes forms feel more cohesive with the rest of a site’s design.

Changelog

Enhancements

  • Add support for precision type placeholders to translator comments eslint. (71145)
  • Core Commands: Add Dashboard option to return to dashboard. (71261)
  • Core Data: Add ‘supportsPagination’ to all appropriate entities. (71302)
  • Core Data: Forward resolvers for pagination selectors. (71304)
  • Core Data: Include pagination meta while receiving intermediate results. (71401)
  • Create Block: Add lifecycle script execution support. (71072)
  • Display names for Context providers. (71208)

DataViews

  • DataForm: Add description support for the combined fields and show the description in the Card layout. (71380)
  • DataForm: Streamline validation behavior. (71345)
  • Revert “DataForm: Streamline validation behavior”. (71359)
  • Support hiding the title in Grid layout, with actions available on hover. (71369)
  • Support the “Minimal UI” story by using DataViews.Footer. (71276)

Block Library

  • Accordion Panel: Remove unnecessary wrapper div and simplify save. (71454)
  • Accordion: Add an “Add” button. (71388)
  • Query Loop Block: Fix broken placeholder. (70840)

Offline

  • api-fetch: Check navigator.onLine to improve failure notices. (71438)

Meta Boxes

  • Edit Post: Check for meta box container before adding constraints. (71423)

Commands

  • feat: Added keyword support & added basic keywords for post/page. (70624)

New APIs

Global Styles

  • Add support for select or dropdown elements. (70379)
  • Global styles: add element support for text related inputs. (70378)

Bug Fixes

  • Add permission checks to Command Palette commands. (71267)
  • Components: Fix Tab font size when used outside WP. (71346)
  • Core Data: Fix error in ‘getEntityRecordsTotalPages’ selector. (71303)
  • Scripts: Do not access window global. (71348)
  • wp-scripts: Remove clean-webpack-plugin dependency. (71080)

Block Library

  • Accordion Header: Fix RTL toggle button layout. (71480)
  • Fix issue of css affecting the nested accordion icon. (71445)
  • Fix timezone in Date block. (71430)
  • Fix: Randomization in Gallery Block doesn’t work when Lightbox is enabled. (71408)
  • Group Block variation:Remove variation text color. (71429)
  • Properly apply styles and classes to the experimental form block. (55755)
  • Template Part: Display icons correctly when in placeholder state. (71327)
  • fix: Prevent accordion toggle button overflow at full width. (71446)
  • fix: Prevent scrollbars on accordion header and toggle. (71484)

Write mode

  • Allow adding “content” role blocks to containers that also have a “content” role in write mode. (71232)
  • Audio and Video: Hide caption controls in contentOnly mode. (71368)
  • Hide ‘Add block’ control in Link UI when Navigation Link block is in contentOnly mode. (71213)
  • Image: Don’t allow convert to cover controls in contentOnly mode. (71329)

Post Editor

  • Edit Post: Fix misplaced icon on back button. (71406)
  • Editor: Fix theme stylesheet injection in ‘useAvailablePatterns’. (71332)

DataViews

  • Fix grid padding values on mobile viewports. (71455)

Block Editor

  • Inserter: Fix InserterListbox rendering for React 19. (71410)

Style Book

  • Accordion Content, Header, Panel: Remove example field. (71407)

Zoom Out

  • Fix Zoom out should be disabled when Show Template is toggled off. (71361)

Components

  • ControlWithError: Show validating state when transitioning from error state. (71260)

Interactivity API

  • iAPI: Make state getters to be updated asynchronously with store(). (70974)

Performance

  • Add wp-env SPX profiler option. (70693)

Post Editor

  • Editor: Improve the ‘Design’ sidebar panel performance. (71333)

Documentation

  • Core Data: Improve ‘registry.batch’ documentation. (71325)
  • DataForm: Better story for validation. (71298)
  • DataViews: Fix defaultLayouts documentation error. (71334)
  • Field Types: Update storybook. (71440)
  • Hooks: Document ‘hookName’ and ‘namespace’ parameters. (71288)
  • Storybook: Set DateCalendar and DateRangeCalendar components as private. (71453)

Code Quality

  • A11y: Remove redundant styles. (65409)
  • Command Palette: Enqueue assets globally. (71264)
  • Convert api-fetch package to TypeScript. (67669)
  • Convert date package to TypeScript. (67665)
  • Core Data: Remove unused reducers. (71305)
  • Fix: Add JSON_HEX_TAG flag to wp_json_encode in script tags. (71280)
  • Interface: Remove leftover comment. (71331)
  • Types: Update to be compatible with React 19. (71374)
  • api-fetch: Clean up error handling. (71458)
  • api-fetch: Cleanup and improve unit tests. (71439)
  • core-data: Use Object.fromEntries instead of reduce when generating entities reducer. (36296)
  • Deps: Bump framer-motion to v11.15.0. (71442)
  • Move Site Editor command from wordpress/editor package to wordpress/core-commands. (71262)

Block Editor

  • Fold uniqueByBlock into options object. (71279)
  • Remove duplicate ‘InsertionPointOpenRef’ context definition. (71465)

Block Library

  • Image block: Remove unused code. (71292)
  • refactor: Remove unnecessary fields from accordion block.json files. (71441)

Post Editor

  • Update types of getCurrentPostId. (71347)

Global Styles

  • Remove unecessary useEffect from ScreenStyleVariations. (71344)

Tools

Testing

  • Avoid using *-latest for runner images. (71201)
  • Fix failing command center end-to-end tests. (71293)
  • GitHub Actions: Try to fix storybook smoke tests. (71284)
  • Upgrade Playwright to v1.55. (71285)

Build Tooling

  • Fix PHP unit testing jobs to not include version. (71396)
  • Release Workflow: Add github.ref validation. (71404)

First-time contributors

The following PRs were merged by first-time contributors:

Contributors

The following contributors merged PRs in this release:

@Adity @andrewserong @aristath @DAreRodz @desrosj @dinhtungdu @getdave @himanshupathak95 @im3dabasia @jsnajdr @juanfra @kmanijak @lalitkumawat1m @levinbaria @MaggieCabrera @Mamaduka @manzoorwanijk @Mayank-Tripathi32 @mcsf @mikachan @mirka @nerrad @oandregal @R1shabh-Gupta @ramonjd @shimotmk @sirreal @swissspidy @t-hamano @talldan @tellthemachines @tyxla @USERSATOSHI @vipul0425 @westonruter @youknowriad

Props @mamaduka and @jorbin for peer review. Props @joen for visual assets.

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

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