Gutenberg 5.3 is out! This release will be included in WordPress 5.2. The planning of this worked great with the next WordPress release thanks to everyone involved.
Navigation block
There’s been extensive moderated testing this week for the Navigation block. It’s so rewarding to converse with participants and get realtime feedback as they click through the prototype.
These sessions are not only boosting the confidence of design decisions, but also bringing to light several areas of improvement. After this week, there will be a post outlining the details of everything learned.
If you want to get involved in future testing, become a WordPress researcher.
Tightening up
This last release includes:
- Nesting inner blocks in the Cover block.
- New styling for the hover and selected borders of blocks.
- Collapsable toolbar for the blocks.
- Transform video shortcodes into video blocks and audio shortcodes into audio blocks.
- Block switcher tooltip has been updated.
Block Management
The Block Manager has been included in this release! It’s been a requested feature for some time now.

Section block
The Section block is difficult requiring a bit more time to get it to a minmum viable product. Aligning the inner blocks so that they conform to the wide and full widths within the Section block includes a lot of math, a lot of testing, and a lot of patience.
Accessibility
The Accessibility & Design Teams are working to prioritize a set of issues right now.
- Headings hierarchy checker.
- Linked gallery images.
- Add subtitles to video block.
- Keyboard text selection triggers block selection unexpectedly.
Thanks for reading, staying informed, and contributing anywhere you can!