Gutenberg 24.2 is out. The Gutenberg plugin is where new WordPress editor features are tested before they reach core. According to the release notes, this version improves notes, menu links, galleries, and design tools.

Notes sit in a margin beside the content

Notes are the comments editors leave on blocks. Until now, they couldn’t stay open next to the Settings sidebar, and they took space from your content.

In 24.2, notes live in a reserved margin beside the canvas. On narrow canvases, each thread shrinks to the author’s avatar, and a click expands it. A new Notes submenu in the Options menu lets you expand, minimize, or hide them. Deleting a note now offers Undo.

The Navigation block’s link search now covers every content type at once. Each result is labeled with its type. You can also switch an existing link from, say, a category to a page without deleting it.

Results are ranked with posts and pages first, then categories, tags, and media. That helps large sites where tags and attachments used to crowd out the content you wanted.

Sort galleries and tint them with one duotone

The Gallery block can now order hand-picked images from newest to oldest, oldest to newest, A to Z, or Z to A. Sorting is a one-time action, so you can still drag images afterward. A Random option reshuffles the images on every page load.

Galleries also support duotone, a two-color tint. Set it on one gallery or site-wide in Global Styles. A duotone on a single image overrides the gallery setting.

More design controls on more blocks

The consistency work from Gutenberg 24.1, released two weeks ago, continues.

  • Minimum width and height controls grew from five blocks to 40.
  • Ten more blocks gain shadows, including Paragraph, List, Buttons, and Gallery.
  • Button, List, List Item, and Media & Text gain background images and gradients.
  • Heading and Post Author Biography gain line indent.

Not every control exists on every block, so check each block’s settings.

React 19 is now on by default

React is the code library that powers the editor screen. Gutenberg 24.2 loads React 19 unless an incompatible theme or plugin is active. In that case, the site stays on React 18.

If your editor breaks after updating, turn React 19 off under Gutenberg > Experiments. Developers should test their plugins and themes now.

Smaller changes

  • After cropping an image, you can restore the original from the More options menu.
  • The Columns block no longer has a column count slider. Use the toolbar buttons.
  • The Post Author field now searches users on the server, which helps sites with many users.
  • New posts no longer publish with the auto-draft slug.

What to do

Gutenberg features usually reach WordPress core in a later release. If you want to try 24.2, install it on a staging site, not your live one. Otherwise, no action is needed.

This follows Gutenberg 24.0, which added the Gallery grid layout four weeks ago.

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