WordPress 7.1, code-named “Mary Lou,” honors jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams. The release focuses on workflow improvements, particularly in media handling, navigation consistency, and developer tooling. The update aims to reduce server load by moving image processing to the browser and adds new blocks for content organization.
Admin bar and navigation
The WordPress admin bar now stays with you as you move across all editors, ensuring consistent navigation from the dashboard to the post editor. The release also includes visual polish updates to the admin interface.
Media editor and processing
A new media editor modal replaces the previous inline cropping tool. It consolidates freeform and aspect-ratio cropping, horizontal and vertical flipping, precise rotation control, and metadata editing into a single workflow.
WordPress 7.1 introduces browser-based image processing using a WebAssembly build of libvips. This shift handles image compression, resizing, and thumbnail generation in the browser, reducing server load and helping avoid memory limits with larger uploads. The release also adds native support for AVIF, HEIC, and HDR gain maps.
Collaboration and notes
The Notes feature has been expanded to support rich text and @mentions. Users can now format notes with bold, italic, and code, add links, or mention collaborators to notify them. Notes can be placed on specific text rather than just entire blocks, and longer notes can be collapsed to keep the margin tidy.
New blocks and developer tools
Two new blocks are included: Playlist for grouping audio tracks with optional waveforms, and Tabs for organizing content into tabbed panels. Developers gain a public SVG Icon API for registering custom icon collections and a new Design System to standardize admin interface theming via the ThemeProvider React component.
The Abilities API is expanded with a filterable execution lifecycle, custom validation, and shared discovery, making it easier to build integrations and automation, including AI-powered tooling.
Performance and accessibility
Performance improvements include opt-in GIF-to-video conversion for smaller file sizes, infinite scrolling in the Media Library by default, and configurable speculative loading via environment variables.
Accessibility enhancements include new wp_get_tooltip() and wp_get_toggletip() functions for accessible tooltips across the admin, improved screen reader support in post list tables, and better navigation in the editor.