v5.1.0-beta.3 Latest
May 28, 2026
New 7 Improve 3 Fix 4 Security 1 Compat 4 Note 1
New
- Self-contained Customizer Framework replaces Kirki. 12 custom controls (Color, Typography, Radio Image, Switch, Dimension, Custom HTML, Checkbox, Slider, Radio Buttonset, Repeater, Upload, Sortable) plus 8 core types.
- Site Skin design-token system: a single colour vocabulary that drives surfaces, brand, links, headings, header, menu, buttons, footer, and copyright across the theme and every integration.
- Native light / dark / auto colour modes. The visitor toggle persists across pages. A pre-render bootstrap script prevents flash-of-light-mode on dark pages.
- Typography control upgrade: 5-row paired layout, 9 inputs per field, with font-style, text-align, and text-decoration newly exposed. Modernized defaults (Inter + Newsreader) ship on new installs; existing customers keep their saved typography.
- 1,358-font Google Fonts library back in the typography picker; searchable, grouped, with custom selections from earlier versions preserved.
- Site Loader with 5 animation styles (Pulse, Wave, Bounce, Spinner, Dots), accessible with role=status and prefers-reduced-motion support. Off by default; turn it on under General then Site Loader.
- Site Skin section UX overhaul: 45 colour fields organized into 9 navigable visual clusters (Mode & Master, Brand, Header, Surfaces, Text & Links, Headings, Buttons, Footer, Copyright) with icon-led cluster heads.
Improve
- Brand colour promoted to its own Brand cluster.
- Theme.json palette helpers now respect dark-mode palette overrides on rendered blocks.
- Sub Header background ships neutral so it adapts cleanly to both light and dark mode. Sites that want a fixed Sub Header background can set one in the Sub Header section.
Fix
- Picking the Dark Style preset now renders the site dark by default, matching the preset name. The visitor color-mode toggle still flips light when used.
- Custom Google Font selections from older versions load again. The theme reads each saved typography setting and loads the chosen font, self-hosting it when Load Google Fonts Locally is enabled.
- Customizer audit fixes for background defaults, typography defaults, repeater and sortable read, foreign sub-key data loss on save, background colour iris regression, and Custom HTML stripping horizontal rules.
- Customizer toggles that used legacy on / yes / true / enable values no longer silently lose their settings on save.
Security
- Removed unused development dependencies and updated build-time tooling. No customer-facing impact.
Compat
- Zero database migration. Every existing customizer setting is preserved byte-for-byte; no settings reset, no opt-in flow.
- Templates unchanged; all 70+ theme setting call sites continue to work.
- Legacy colour aliases preserved for theme.json and third-party CSS that hooked into 5.0.3 variable names. Aliases scheduled for removal in 5.3.0.
- Customer-saved values always take precedence over modernized defaults.
Note
- Pre-release polish before 5.1.0 final. Beta 3 restores Dark Style preset behaviour on top of the beta 2 work. The full 5.1.0 notes follow below.