A new design proposal would move WordPress and plugin alerts out of the banners that clutter your dashboard. They would go into one notification center, opened from a bell icon in the admin bar.
Automattic product designer Poli Gilad shared the design for the Feature Notifications project. She calls it a prototype, not a finished design.
What would change
Today, plugins print their own messages at the top of admin screens. Each looks different, and they push your page down. Under the proposal, plugins would send WordPress the details instead. WordPress would control how each one looks and where it appears.
Each notification would show what it is about, who sent it, and one clear next step. There are three severity levels:
- Critical: pinned to the top. It turns the bell’s count red and stays until you resolve it, not just read it.
- Warning: held in an Alerts tab until you deal with it.
- Info: everything else.
According to Gilad, promotional messages cannot be marked critical. That would let you mute plugin promos without losing urgent alerts.
Will it break my plugins?
No. Gilad says existing admin notices, including custom ones, will keep working. They are just not where notifications are heading.
When will it arrive?
Not soon. Gilad says plugins can only adopt the system once it is in WordPress core. A feature plugin, version 0.3.0, comes first, and developer Jonathan Bossenger has said he plans to release it on December 1.
Open questions remain, including whether three severity levels are enough and who decides what counts as critical. Feedback is open on the proposal post and in GitHub issue #655.
This is related to earlier work on dashboard notices and screen readers, which WordPress paused in October.
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