WordPress 4.9 is expected to be released on November 14th, 2017. We got our hands on the first beta version to checkout the new features and changes that are coming. In this article, we will show you what’s coming WordPress 4.9 with features and screenshots.

Note: You can try out the beta version on your computer or on a staging environment by using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin.

It is still under development, so some features may not make it to the final release.

Save and Schedule Theme Changes in Customizer

WordPress 4.9 will introduce saving theme customizations as draft. Now when you make changes to a theme using the customizer, you will have an option to save your changes as a draft instead of making them live.

This new feature will also allow you to share the preview of changes with a url. You can send this URL to any user, and they will be able to see your website with the changes made in that particular draft.

Want to publish your theme changes at a specific time? WordPress 4.9 will also allow you to schedule changes.

The New Gallery Widget

WordPress 4.8 brought media widgets including rich text, audio, image, and video. WordPress 4.9 will introduce the new gallery widget.

It will allow you to create a native WordPress gallery and add it to any widget ready areas.

However if you want a more powerful gallery with albums, then you need to look at a third-party plugin like Envira Gallery.

Add Media Button in Text Widget

The newly introduced text widget came with visual and plain text editors. However, if you wanted to add an image, you still had to write HTML code.

WordPress 4.9 will fix this by adding the ‘Add media’ button on top of the text editor. This will allow users to easily add images inside the rich text widget.

Improved Code Editing Experience

WordPress 4.9 will bring a much better code editing experience. You will see an enhanced code editor while editing code in custom CSS, theme editor, or plugin editor.

This code editor comes with syntax highlighting, code suggestions, and auto-completion.

If you have ever faced syntax error when editing your theme, then this enhancement will automatically fix many common mistakes that cause such errors.

Don’t like syntax highlighting? It can be easily disabled from your user profile page.

Miscellaneous Changes

These under the hood changes are likely to make into the final WordPress 4.9 release.

Better mapping for theme widgets and navigation menus after switching themes. #39693, #39692

Removal of SWFUpload library from the core. #41752

Recursively search for files in plugin and theme editors. #6531

We hope this article helped you learn what’s coming in WordPress 4.9. Let us know which features you find exciting and what you would like to see in future releases of WordPress?

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