WordPress 7.1 – nicknamed Mary Lou (after Mary Lou Williams) was released on 19th August 2026. Whilst it’s a significant release with features I would actually use and that should be celebrated, one feature that is missing – it was expected that WordPress 7.1 would feature Real Time Collaboration after it was removed from 7.0, but it seemed it has been delayed again. To be honest – I’m happy. I think it is a feature that I’d rarely use, and could see it cause confusion, and the infrastructure that is needed from hosts really isn’t there yet.
The features that did ship? Amazing. Here’s my favourite things.
Pseudo State Styling
It’s nice now that a blog post I wrote has become redundant.
Pseudo states are the states that interacive elements can be – hover, focus, active etc. Usually for when you have links. Enforcing this is a nightmare in WordPress, hence my blog post on how I do it – usually very simple, and even then there can be things that are missed (looking at you, Gravity Forms). Now it’s native within WordPress, so we can select the state, and edit it.
The only slight thing to make it better would be a “Copy from/to” element, to make things quicker. Normally you’d have two states, and rarely style each element differently. Right now you have to set each element. It’s fine, but it could be quicker.
Responsive Styling in the Block Editor
After seemingly a decade (after all, the verison of Gutenberg has been around since 2015 I believe), one of the most requested features – responsive styling in the block editor – is now present. You can not only hide/show elements on the site, but also style elements differently dependent on location. This is done by extending the preview window located at the top of the page.
Honestly, this could be a game changer. Having to write custom CSS because buttons for example need to be on a different sizes for mobile devices is now no longer needed, as the block editor can be used to set this. This is fanstastic and can help save a lot of time for us developers.
Tabs and Playlist Blocks
Again, another requested block to add is a tabbed content block. I tend to spin my own whenever a client requests this – a way to put content into various panels to appear organised. They can be bad for things like search engines, but only if not built right. Now there’s a native block that we can expand.
I’d have liked more options to style hover elements and active tabs, as well as a way of adding blocks into tab headings (such as icons). But this is a great start and hopefully it will be expanded going forward.
Similarly, there’s now a Playlist block, which is useful for sites that use audio like podcasts or musicians, as you can list audio files to play in a playlist. Handy!
New Inline Media Editor Button
I tend to do my media editing in a tool outside of WordPress, but for simple items like crop/flipping and other elements, you can use the new inline media editor to do this.
It is a lot cleaner, and a few more options are available, plus also you can see how the images will look before committing. I’m still probably going to use my image editors, but for quick and easy things, it’s a lot more intuitive.
Mark images as decorative
A minor one, but I’ve a client that requires very high accessibility standards, and this again will save a lot of time – you can now mark images as being “decorative”. Why’s this important? Well it will encourage assistive technologies to ignore the image, and not read it out.
Other WordPress 7.1 new features
The above are the new features in WordPress 7.1 I’m most excited about. There are more, and I’ve listed them below:-
- Expansion of the Icon block, allowing icon sets to be created and uploaded, and icons to have uniform styles.
- Combine image and gradient backgrounds for blocks.
- Improved Media Handling – compression, image resizing and thumbnail compression occur in the browser now, not on the server.
You can read more about these in the Release Notes.
Be Sure to Upgrade
Honestly, there’s loads in WordPress 7.1 so be sure to upgrade. If you are on one of my WordPress Maintenance plans, you should already be on WordPress 7.1, or will be very soon. If not, send me an email and see what I can do for you.
Featured Image: “Mary Lou Williams, New York, N.Y., ca. 1946” by ky_olsen is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Some much needed, long overdue features in this one 👌
ABSOLUTELY. Responsive styles should have been in there 5 years ago. But we’ll take it.