WordPress 6.7 “Rollins” Released, Including a New Default Theme

On November 12, WordPress 6.7 was released for WordPress users everywhere to enjoy. Keeping with the jazz theme, WordPress 6.7 goes by the name “Rollins,” named after Sonny Rollins.

In total, 750 different contributors worked on WordPress 6.7.

In this post, I want to take you through some of the highlights of the release, including features that regular users will care about and features that developers might care about.

To start, WordPress 6.7 brings a new default WordPress theme – Twenty Twenty-Five.

In keeping with recent releases, Twenty Twenty-Five is built on the Site Editor and includes tons of block patterns and style variations to help you create a great-looking site. It focuses on simplicity, which you can definitely see in the minimalist designs. Check it out here.

Then, here are some of the other new user-facing features in WordPress 6.7:

• Zoom out in the WordPress editor – to give yourself a more “bigger picture” view while working in the editor, you can now zoom out. This can be helpful for working with wider/longer designs, as you’ll be able to see more content without scrolling.
• HEIC image support – ever been frustrated that you couldn’t upload HEIC images directly from your smartphone? Now you can! WordPress will automatically convert them, as long as your server supports that.
• Font management improvements – you get a more streamlined experience to manage fonts and typography on your site, including the ability to set font size presets.
• Connect blocks to custom fields – you can now easily connect blocks to custom fields data without needing to use code, which I think is pretty cool for people who are building more dynamic WordPress sites. These are improvements to the Block Bindings API.
• Query Loop block improvements – I think these are a great addition because I always found some parts of the Query Loop block to be a little awkward.

WordPress 6.7 also brings performance enhancements to various parts of WordPress, including faster pattern loading, improved PHP 8+ support, auto sizes for lazy-loaded images, and more. The update also includes 65+ accessibility fixes and enhancements.

If you’re a WordPress developer, you also might be interested in some of these more developer-focused features and enhancements:

• Template Registration API – there’s a new API to simplify custom template registration or plugins. You’ll be able to register both templates and template parts.
• Interactivity API improvements – you’ll get access to new APIs for better state management, along with other improvements.
• Preview Options API – this lets developers add their own custom options to the “preview” drop-down.

Because WordPress 6.7 is a feature-focused major release (rather than a security and maintenance-focused minor release), you do not need to update right away.

In fact, for major releases, I always recommend waiting for a couple of weeks or so. While the beta and release candidate process should catch most issues, there are still sometimes problems and edge cases that aren’t found until there’s a full reason.

By waiting a week or two, you give these potential problems a chance to be discovered and fixed. 👍

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