What’s Coming in WordPress 6.7: Key Features to Look Forward To

As WordPress continues its journey to empower creators with enhanced flexibility and usability, the 6.7 release brings exciting new tools and refinements. This version, expected in early 2024, focuses on user experience improvements, customization options, and better performance. Let’s dive into some of the standout features we anticipate in WordPress 6.7!

1. New Theme Twenty Twenty-Five

WordPress has continued its tradition of releasing a new default theme each year, and WordPress 6.7 brings us Twenty Twenty-Five.

Each default theme offers something unique, and Twenty Twenty-Five follows suit. It’s built on the philosophy that “simple tasks should be easy and intuitive, while complex tasks remain possible.” Notably, this theme emphasizes a blog layout as its default view, which sets it apart from recent themes designed more for general business or multipurpose use.

From our testing, Twenty Twenty-Five comes packed with various pre-designed block patterns and stunning style variations. These templates allow users to quickly adapt the theme to their needs without extensive customization. For bloggers, this theme is especially appealing, placing content front and center.

Its lightweight design and strong focus on accessibility ensure excellent performance across devices. Customization is also a breeze—you can adjust colors, fonts, and layouts with just a few clicks, making the entire setup process smooth and stress-free.

2. Zoom Out View for Site Editing

Many users, including us, have found that editing longer pages with numerous patterns, sections, and blocks can involve a lot of scrolling up and down.

Imagine if you could zoom out to get a better view of your entire content layout.

The new zoom-out view feature in WordPress 6.7 makes this possible. It allows users to edit patterns on a larger scale with ease. Just click the Zoom-out button in the top right toolbar to activate it.

3. Fixed Long Waited Issue of Heic Image.

Uploading photos directly from your iPhone, iPad, or other Apple devices can be tricky due to HEIC file compatibility issues.

A significant update in WordPress 6.7 is its support for HEIC image uploads.

Your WordPress site will automatically convert HEIC images to JPEG for seamless compatibility across devices and browsers.

This feature, however, requires your server to have Imagick installed with HEIC support (most WordPress hosting providers already include it.

You can see if your website supports HEIC conversion by going to the Tools » Site Health page and switching to the ‘Info’ tab.

Scroll down to the Media Handling » ImageMagick supported file formats section and look for HEIC.

4. Block Library & Patterns

WordPress 6.7 introduces several enhancements to the Block Library. Here are some of the most useful updates:

• Background Image Support for Quote and Group Blocks
  You’ll now have the option to add background images to both Quote and Group blocks, making it easier to add visual appeal to your blog posts.
• Social Icons Block
  The “Add New Icon” button is now more user-friendly, and you can add borders around the social icons block for a more customized look.

• The Buttons Block
  You can now set a background color for the Buttons block.
• The Image Block
  Users will be able to drag and drop multiple images onto an Image block, and it will automatically convert into a Gallery block.

5. Refined Data Views

WordPress 6.7 continues to refine the Data Views feature introduced in earlier releases. Data Views provides users with a powerful way to filter and manage content in the editor. One key improvement is reordering fields directly within the Data View configuration user interface. This makes it easier for users to customize how data is displayed and managed. We’ve also noticed improvements to bulk actions and the user interface. For instance, the bulk actions menu has been moved to the footer, merging it with the floating toolbar and improving its overall usability.

6. Other Notable Changes That Are Present in WordPress 6.7

WordPress 6.7 brings a variety of behind-the-scenes enhancements aimed at improving performance, and stability, and providing new API capabilities for developers. These updates enhance the overall experience for developers and site administrators alike:

• PHP 8.x Compatibility: This release includes further refinements for PHP 8.x, removing deprecated code tied to older PHP versions and ensuring compatibility with modern PHP setups. 
• Template Registration API: A new Application Programming Interface simplifies the process of programmatically registering templates and template parts, eliminating the need for filters and streamlining how plugins manage custom templates.
• Script Loader Enhancements: Outdated polyfills, such as wp-polyfill and regenerator-runtime, have been removed, reducing unnecessary script dependencies for modern browsers.

In total, WordPress 6.7 includes over 500 enhancements and more than 200 bug fixes for both the editor and Core. 

We hope this article gave you a solid overview of what’s coming in WordPress 6.7 and the new features to explore. We’re especially excited about data views and the improvements to the Block API, which will make site customization even easier.