Released on July 1, 2026, Gutenberg 23.5 brings inline cropping to Cover block images and makes the editor canvas freely resizable to any width, replacing workarounds that previously required third-party tools. The update is available now from the WordPress plugin directory.
The headline addition is Cover block cropping, which brings inline image editing directly into cover images. Previously part of an experimental Media editor workflow limited to standalone images, cropping can now be triggered via a modal without leaving the block editor. Companion improvements add precision: a magnified crop canvas aids fine adjustments, crop handles now snap to source pixels, and keyboard resizing works correctly when aspect ratio is locked.
Alongside cropping, the editor canvas itself becomes freely resizable in 23.5. Rather than snapping only to Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile presets, editors can now drag the canvas to any arbitrary width. The device preview dropdown and resize handles work in tandem — jump to a preset viewport or dial in an exact pixel width between presets. Blocks configured to display only at certain breakpoints (screen size thresholds) will appear and disappear in real time as you drag, making it easier to test responsive layouts without leaving the editor. The preview dropdown also now houses a toggle for responsive editing, consolidating preview and viewport-specific controls in one place.
- Text shadow in Global Styles
- A new
textShadowstyle property lets editors configure text shadows site-wide through the Global Styles panel, without custom CSS. - Icon block transforms
- The Icon block gains flip and rotate controls in the toolbar, and now inserts a default icon on placement rather than showing an empty placeholder.
- Real-time collaboration controls
- Collaborative editing can now be disabled on a per-post-type basis, and a cursor-jump bug in the code editor during remote sync has been fixed.
- ThemeProvider public export
ThemeProvideris now exported directly from@wordpress/theme, making it accessible as a public API for developers building custom editor tooling.
One requirement change affects site operators running older WordPress installs: Gutenberg 23.5 now requires WordPress 6.9 or later. Sites on earlier versions will need to update WordPress before installing this release of the plugin.
For developers, the changelog includes a hard deprecation of the 40px default size in BoxControl, design token renames in the Theme package (bg/fg groups are now background/foreground), and @ariakit/react bumped to version 0.4.29. The Style Engine package also gains exported public TypeScript types, which should benefit teams building typed tooling on top of Gutenberg’s styling infrastructure.
The resizable canvas replaces the older three-preset device preview, so testing a layout at an exact breakpoint no longer means switching to an external tool or resizing the browser window.
