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Notes iteration for WordPress 7.2 #80015
Description
Overall Goal
Following on from the work in #66377, #73260 and #76316 for the last three respective releases, this issue serves as the iteration issue for Notes enhancements, tasks, and bug fixes planned for WordPress 7.2.
Progress is tracked via the sub-issues attached to this issue, listed in rough priority order.
Scope for This Release
Priorities
The proposed focus for 7.2 is on three areas:
- Emoji reactions (Add emoji reactions as a first class comment type #75144) - Add reactions as a first-class comment type, letting collaborators respond to a note with a lightweight reaction instead of a full reply. In progress, carried over from 7.1.
- ✅ Floating notes in the canvas margin (Render floating notes in the canvas margin instead of an invisible sidebar #79970) - Render notes alongside the content they refer to in the canvas margin (rather than an invisible sidebar), bringing the experience closer to familiar document editors. This also lays the groundwork for the minimized "pills" mode (Add a “Minified Notes Mode” for reduced visual footprint (similar to Google Docs' “Minimize comments”) #73417).
- Suggestion mode (Add Suggestion mode with Notes #73411) - Explore support for proposing edits as suggestions that can be reviewed, accepted, or rejected, building on the Notes infrastructure.
Other enhancements
Discoverability and indicators
- Notes: improve discoverability of which blocks have notes #73414
- Notes need indicator in block and list-view + associated edit option #73956
- Notes are hard to find: consider promoting "Add note" to the block toolbar #78188
- Add support for identifying new notes #75026
- Notes: Color the avatar ring only when a user is active in the document #80479
Showing and hiding notes
- Add a “Minified Notes Mode” for reduced visual footprint (similar to Google Docs' “Minimize comments”) #73417
- Add a "Show/Hide Notes Panel" command #73812
- Add a toolbar control to show and hide notes #79963
- Need to add “Show More” / “Show Less” toggle in Note. #72822
Notes on new surfaces
- Allow Notes to appear on post previews with a custom capability (aka "Reviewer-friendly workflow") #73418
- Show Discussions outside Editor #71622
- Support Notes for the Style Book #73278
- Make Notes available in templates #72918
Workflow and management
- Support Notes on content spanning multiple blocks #73416
- Notes: all comments view show summary of what's been commented on #73273
- Enhanced Notification support for Notes #72184
- Add a way to "lock" notes for a site, or certain posts #72724
- Ensure notes feature scales to many notes #71668
- Notify users when they are @mentioned in a note #80719
Bug fixes
- Note appears as being attached to a deleted block when two users add them at exactly the same moment using real-time collaboration #74751
- Adding a note closes the already open sidebar and doesn't restore it afterwards #75450
- New notes (unnested) are not properly attached to a block when post is not saved #72717
- Block focus when a note is selected can feel too much like spotlight mode #72860
- Drafted notes are lost when focus is removed from block #73473
- Re-selecting a hidden block loses its note position #73565
- Notes Sidebar container lacks independent mouse scrolling, freezing entirely when post content is short #80449
- Undo restores a deleted inline Note's marker markup without restoring the Note #80672
Activity
25 remaining items
adamsilverstein commentedon Sep 30, 2026
Notes - progress update (2026-09-30)
This is the first update on the Notes iteration for WordPress 7.2. I'll be going over it at Notes office hours in #core-notes on Slack tomorrow, so if anything below looks off or you want to add to it, please reply here or come by.
Claude pulled this together from the tracking issue, the PRs, and the release branches - I reviewed and edited it:
Reviews and testing are the bottleneck on most of this, so if you have time for any of the PRs above, that is the most useful help right now.
adamsilverstein commentedon Sep 30, 2026
I created a 7.3 tracking issue so that as we triage issues that are currently children of this issue and decide they are not in scope, we can move them to the 7.3 milestone:
annezazu commentedon Oct 13, 2026
@adamsilverstein checking in here as we are a week out from beta 1. How are things looking to you?
In particular, I wanted to check in around suggestions. While we've gotten some great publisher feedback, more testing, and more architectural reviews overall, the feature still feels too early to confidently merge. I lean towards adding it first as a Gutenberg experiment asap, along with a structured call for testing that can be sent out to more folks. This will likely also ensure we're moving well together with RTC. cc @peterwilsoncc & @Mamaduka as core tech leads for 7.2.
In terms of the other features, simpler emoji support, filtering for all notes, expand/minified/hide options, floating canvas, and a toolbar item appearing after a note is added are all looking solid and on track from my vantage point.
Mamaduka commentedon Oct 13, 2026
Agreed. I think it makes sense for large features like Suggestion Mode to land in plugin first and have a longer testing period.
This also matches my assessment.