Recently, WordPress 6.4 was made available. It is 2023’s third significant release.
Along with important bug fixes and enhancements to enhance the website creation and management process, it comes with a host of new features.
With screenshots of the new features, we will demonstrate what’s new in WordPress 6.4 in this article.
WordPress 6.4 is a significant release, and you will need to manually trigger the update unless you are using a managed WordPress hosting service. For instructions, see our guide on safely updating WordPress.
New Default Theme – Twenty Twenty-Four
WordPress 6.4, the final release of the year, comes with a brand-new Twenty Twenty-Four default theme.
This default theme is multifunctional and appropriate for various types of websites.
Twenty Twenty-Four is very simple to edit and customize with an emphasis on flexibility and customization. There are even six style options available when it ships.
Users can quickly create content layouts for their posts and pages with WordPress block patterns.
You can use dozens of patterns from Twenty Twenty-Four ships on your website.
This comprises section patterns that let you include frequently used sections in your layouts, such as a services, call to action, FAQ, and more.
Enhanced Pattern Recognition with Personalized Categories
Patterns are collections of pre-arranged blocks that you can quickly use anywhere on your website.
Using the site editor to manage all of your patterns is made simpler with WordPress 6.4.
When making a new pattern, you can now include custom pattern categories.
Everywhere in your WordPress admin area, the Pattern creation modal appears the same.
Your patterns are arranged into categories on the Patterns tab of the Site Editor.
Attachment Pages Are Defaultly Disabled
WordPress used to create a page where you could upload attachments to your website.
Only the attachment (picture or other media file) and its description were displayed on this page. Search engines subsequently crawled these pages and deemed them inappropriate for the SEO of your WordPress website.
In order to disable attachment pages and direct visitors to the post where they added the media or image, users depended on WordPress SEO plugins such as All in One SEO.
Attachment pages will be turned off by default for all newly created websites starting with WordPress 6.4.
It will continue to function normally if you already have a WordPress website. On the other hand, you can add the following custom code snippet to your website in order to disable attachment pages.
update_option( 'wp_attachment_pages_enabled', 0 );New Command Palette Design
WordPress 6.3 introduced the command palette. It enabled users to swiftly enter commands by pressing the CTRL+K keyboard shortcut.
WordPress 6.4 adds new keyboard shortcuts and a number of tool enhancements. The element text has been subtly updated to make it slightly darker in order to improve contrast.
To work with blocks, new commands and actions have been introduced. Duplicate, transform, delete, and insert commands fall under this category.
Additionally, you can use the command palette to select multiple blocks and transform them.
Block Editor Upgrades
WordPress 6.4 comes with multiple core releases of Gutenberg, the project name for the block content editor. There are numerous new features and improvements in every one of them.
Here are a few of Block Editor’s more noticeable improvements.
Group Block Background Photos
The simplest method for creating distinct layout sections in the post, page, or entire site editor is to group blocks.
Before, the block editor did not allow you to use a background image in a block. Users can now set a background image for any group block in WordPress 6.4.
Better Parent / Child Block Toolbar
In the past, the toolbar would constantly move and alter as you worked with blocks that had child blocks.
This did not result in the best possible user experience for the Navigation, List, and Quote blocks.
When navigating the inner blocks, WordPress 6.4 maintains a consistent user experience by automatically attaching the child toolbar to the parent.
Better List/Outline View
In the site/block editor, the List view provides you with a brief synopsis of the layout of your page or post.
The list view in WordPress 6.4 has been updated with new features and an improved user interface.
You can now rename Group blocks in the list view.
This would help you identify what each group block does and will make your layouts more readable.
When you added an image or gallery, the list view would only display the label image or gallery. To view the image or gallery that was manually selected, you had to scroll.
You can now see an image preview in the list view with WordPress 6.4.
Open Link Preview in a New Tab
WordPress 6.3’s link preview control repositioned the Advanced toggle’s “Open in new tab” option.
To open a link in a new tab, a few more clicks were needed.
This was a feature that a lot of people used frequently.
The core team added a new checkbox to the link preview modal based on user requests, allowing users to set links to open in a new tab without having to go into the advanced options.
Block Hooks Can Now Be Purchased
Developers can now use the block hook functionality in WordPress 6.4.
Block hooks, so named because they mimic the functionality of the hooks in WordPress core APIs, let developers dynamically extend blocks.
Plugins, for example, have the ability to add custom options to a block. Users will be able to toggle these options on and off via the block settings panel.
