Gutenberg 16.9 Lets You Rename (Almost) Any Block, Adds Experimental Form and Input Blocks

Delivering on an highly-requested feature, Gutenberg contributors have made it possible to rename almost any block in the List View. Version 16.9 was released this week with the new feature, which builds on Gutenberg 16.7‘s introduction of the ability to rename Group blocks.

It works in a similar way to naming Photoshop layers. Users can now open the list view, click on the ellipsis menu, select “Rename,” and enter a custom name.

video credit: Gutenberg PR #54426

“Allowing users to distinguish between blocks in the List View is becoming increasingly important as the scope of the Site Editor grows,” Automattic-sponsored contributor Dave Smith said in the original ticket proposing the feature for the Group block. “Given that all blocks are currently labelled by the block name (e.g. Group) it can be difficult to distinguish between them. This is especially important if your Groups represent distinct ‘sections’ of a given page/template.”

Every block can be renamed with the exception of these four:

core/block

core/template-part

core/pattern

core/navigation

More renaming capabilities have been added in 16.9, including the ability to duplicate and rename patterns, as well as pattern categories.

This release introduces new experimental form and inputs blocks to allow building basic forms. It’s a feature that has taken many by surprise, as few would have predicted WordPress core would be adding form building. A very early version is available under Gutenberg > Experiments, under the “Form and input blocks” experiment setting.

“Why has there been no proactive outreach to the many developers of longstanding WordPress form solutions currently used by millions and millions of WordPress sites?” Gravity Forms co-founder Carl Hancock commented on the PR.

“It seems like proactive outreach to people who are experts in this space and who could do the most to help drive adoption (beyond comments/search/etc.) would have been a good thing. On many levels. Trying to get them on board with contributing, learning from their shared historical knowledge, and even more important of all… building on top of it and adopting it instead of introducing a point of more fragmentation.”

The forms feature is still in the very early stages of experimentation, and more information may be published to the November edition of “What’s New For Developers?“

A few other notable highlights from this release include the following:

New media categories: Audio and Video for organizing patterns by media type

Sort pages by date in the Site Editor’s page management screen

Command Palette now shows block-specific commands as contextual suggestions

Experiments: Added featured image field to the page list

Check out the release post for Gutenberg 16.9 to see the full changelog and more details on bug fixes and enhancements to performance, tooling, documentation, code quality, and accessibility.