WordPress 6.4 “Shirley” – WordPress News

Say hello to WordPress 6.4 “Shirley,” named after the iconic jazz artist Shirley Horn. Her distinctive voice and extraordinary connection to the piano established her as one of the leading jazz musicians of her generation. Horn’s journey from the Washington D.C. jazz scene to the international stage is a testament to her dedication and perseverance. Her influence reached far beyond the confines of traditional jazz, breaking boundaries and inspiring audiences worldwide.

Enjoy the easy pace of Shirley Horn’s music as you take in all that 6.4 offers.

This latest version of WordPress introduces a new, versatile default theme and a suite of upgrades to empower every step of your creative journey. Craft your content seamlessly with further writing improvements. Explore more ways to bring your vision to life and streamline site editing with enhanced tools. Whether you’re new to WordPress or an experienced creator, “Shirley” has something for you. Discover the unmatched flexibility of building with blocks and let your ideas take flight.

What’s inside 6.4

Meet Twenty Twenty-Four

Experience site editing at its finest with Twenty Twenty-Four. This new multi-faceted default theme has been thoughtfully crafted with three distinct use cases in mind, from writers and artists to entrepreneurs. Save time and effort with its extensive collection of over 35 templates and patterns—and unlock a world of creative possibilities with a few tweaks. Twenty Twenty-Four’s remarkable flexibility ensures an ideal fit for almost any type of site. Check it out in this demo.

Let your writing flow

New enhancements ensure your content creation journey is smooth. Find new keyboard shortcuts in List View, smarter list merging, and enhanced control over link settings. A cohesive toolbar experience for the Navigation, List, and Quote blocks lets you work efficiently with the tooling options you need.

The Command Palette just got better

First introduced in WordPress 6.3, the Command Palette is a powerful tool to quickly find what you need, perform tasks efficiently, and speed up your building workflow. Enjoy a refreshed design and new commands to perform block-specific actions in this release.

Categorize and filter patterns

Patterns are an excellent way to leverage the potential of blocks and simplify your site-building process. WordPress 6.4 allows you to organize them with custom categories. Plus, new advanced filtering in the Patterns section of the inserter makes finding all your patterns more intuitive.

Get creative with more design tools

Build beautiful and functional layouts with an expanded set of design tools. Play with background images in Group blocks for unique designs and maintain image dimensions consistent with placeholder aspect ratios. Do you want to add buttons to your Navigation block? Now you can do it conveniently without a line of code.

Make your images stand out

Enable lightbox functionality to let your site visitors enjoy full-screen, interactive images on click. Apply it globally or to specific images to customize the viewing experience.

Rename Group blocks

Set custom names for Group blocks to organize and distinguish areas of your content easily. These names will be visible in List View.

Preview images in List View

New previews for Gallery and Image blocks in List View let you visualize and locate where images on your content are at a glance.

Share patterns across sites

Need to use your custom patterns on another site? Import and export them as JSON files from the Site Editor’s patterns view.

Introducing Block Hooks

Block Hooks enables developers to automatically insert dynamic blocks at specific content locations, enriching the extensibility of block themes through plugins. While considered a developer tool, this feature is geared to respect your preferences and gives you complete control to add, dismiss, and customize auto-inserted blocks to your needs.

Performance wins

This release includes more than 100 performance-related updates for a faster and more efficient experience. Notable enhancements focus on template loading performance for themes (including Twenty Twenty-Four), usage of the script loading strategies “defer” and “async” in core, blocks, and themes, and optimization of autoloaded options.

Accessibility highlights

Every release is committed to making WordPress accessible to everyone. WordPress 6.4 brings several List View improvements and aria-label support for the Navigation block, among other highlights. The admin user interface includes enhancements to button placements, “Add New” menu items context, and Site Health spoken messages. Learn more about all the updates aimed at improving accessibility.

Other notes of interest

Learn more about WordPress 6.4

Check out the new WordPress 6.4 page to learn more about the numerous enhancements and features of this release.

Explore Learn WordPress for quick how-to videos, online workshops, and other free resources to level up your WordPress knowledge and skills.

If you are looking for detailed technical notes on new changes, the WordPress 6.4 Field Guide is for you. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Developer Blog to stay on top of the latest development updates, tutorials, and more.

For more information on installation, fixes, and file changes, visit the 6.4 release notes.

The 6.4 release squad

​​The WordPress 6.4 release comes to you from an underrepresented gender release squad to welcome and empower diverse voices in the WordPress open source project.

Akshaya Rane, 6.4 release coordinator team member

Over several weeks, the 6.4 release squad kept the release on track and moving forward by leading collective work, connecting ideas, and removing roadblocks.

• Release Lead: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
• Release Coordinators: Chloé Bringmann, Ebonie Butler, Akshaya Rane, Francesca Marano. Cohort: Dee Teal, Jaimie Olmstead, Jyolsna J E, Mary Baum
• Core Tech Leads: Mike Schroder, Tonya Mork. Cohort: Stephanie Walters
• Editor Tech Leads:  Sarah Norris, Siobhan Bamber, Tammie Lister. Cohort: Devan Ferguson, Frédérique Battel, Jessica Goddard, Katie Ayres, Marta Torre, Nyasha Green, Pooja Bhimani
• Core Triage Leads: Nicole Furlan, Olga Gleckler
• Editor Triage Leads: Anne McCarthy, Birgit Pauli-Haack. Cohort: Emily Leffler Schulman
• Documentation Leads: Abha Thakor, Femy Praseeth, Mushrit Shabnam. Cohort: D.J. Billings, Jamie VanRaalte, Laura Byrne, Tiffany Bridge, Winstina Hughes
• Marketing and Communications Leads: Meher Bala, Reyes Martínez, Sé Reed. Cohort: Meagan Hanes, Michelle Frechette
• Test Lead: Pooja Derashri. Cohort: Anne Bovelett, Birgit Olzem
• Design Leads: Ellen Bauer, Estela Rueda. Cohort: Allison Tarr, Ana Cirujano, Cathi Bosco, Sonia Gaballa, Ohia
• Performance Lead: Emily Clarke. Cohort: Linnea Huxford
• Training Leads: Courtney P.K., Courtney Roberston
• Default Theme Leads: Jessica Lyschik, Maggie Cabrera

Thank you, contributors

WordPress believes in democratizing publishing and the freedoms that come with open source. Supporting this idea is a global and diverse community of people working together to strengthen the software.

WordPress 6.4 reflects the countless efforts and passion of more than 600 contributors in at least 56 countries. This release also welcomed over 170 first-time contributors!

Their collaboration delivered more than 1150 enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress open source community.

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Over 60 locales have translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 6.4 into their language. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200 languages.

Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

Get involved

Participation in WordPress is not limited to coding. If contributing appeals to you, learning more and getting involved is easy. Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress, and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you.

Looking ahead

Over the past two decades, WordPress has transformed the digital publishing landscape and empowered anyone to create and share, from handcrafted personal stories to world-changing movements.

The present and future of WordPress hold exciting opportunities for everyone, builders and enterprises alike. The foundational work for Phase 3 of the roadmap continues, with efforts focused on fostering real-time collaboration and streamlining publishing flows to improve how creators and teams work together in WordPress.

Stay on top of the latest news and contributing opportunities by subscribing to WordPress News and the WP Briefing podcast.

A release haiku

The smooth feel of jazz
The cutting-edge of the web
Install 6.4