WordPress 7.1 shipped on August 19, 2026, the final day of WordCamp US in Phoenix. It is the second major release of the year, led by Anne McCarthy with Aki Hamano and Joe Dolson as tech leads. If you skipped 7.0 and have been waiting for things to settle, this is the release that actually settles them.

The headline features are responsive styling, interactive state controls, two new blocks, and a meaningful upgrade to the Notes collaboration system. The AI features that everyone expected got scaled back. More on that in a bit.

Responsive styling without touching CSS

This is the one people have been asking for since the block editor shipped. You can now set different styles for different screen sizes directly inside the editor. Click the device preview icon, turn on "Responsive styles," switch to Tablet or Mobile, and any style change you make applies only to that viewport.

During testing, I set a smaller font size on a button in the Tablet view and the desktop design stayed exactly where it was. WordPress shows a badge in the block settings panel so you always know which viewport you are styling for. It works at two levels: globally in Global Styles (every instance of a block type across your site) or locally on a single block on a single page.

The editor canvas is also more flexible now. Instead of being locked to Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile presets, you can drag the canvas to any width and watch your blocks respond in real time. Theme developers can define custom breakpoints in theme.json so the preview widths match the actual theme.

This is a big deal for anyone who has been writing @media queries by hand or installing a page builder just to get mobile-specific styling. It does not replace a full CSS workflow for complex designs, but for the 80% case of "make this heading smaller on phones," it is exactly right.

Hover, focus, and active states in the editor

Alongside responsive styling, WordPress 7.1 introduces interactive state styling. A new "State" dropdown in the block settings lets you visually style how a block responds to hover, focus, and active interactions. You can set a different background color for a button when someone mouses over it, preview the change live, and never write a line of CSS.

Previously, changing a button's hover color meant adding a custom snippet to your theme or using a plugin. Now it is a dropdown and a color picker. Not every block exposes these state controls yet — coverage is expanding block by block — but for buttons and links, it works well.

There is also a nice refinement when you apply local style changes globally. WordPress now shows a review step so you can choose exactly which modified styles to push to the whole site and keep the rest as local overrides. That is a small thing that prevents a lot of accidental damage.

Two new blocks: Tabs and Playlist

WordPress 7.1 adds a Tabs block and a Playlist block. Tabs lets you organize content into clickable panels instead of stacking everything vertically. It has been through several rounds of refactoring in recent Gutenberg releases and feels mature. Good for product specs, FAQs, or comparing options without making the reader scroll through a wall of text.

The Playlist block is an audio playlist with waveform visualization. It is niche, but if you run a podcast or music site, it is one fewer plugin to install.

The Table of Contents block, which has been in development since 2022, was punted to WordPress 7.2. That one stings a little.

Notes gets @mentions and email notifications

Notes arrived in WordPress 6.9 as a way to leave comments on blocks inside the editor. WordPress 7.1 turns it into a real collaboration tool. The big addition is @mentions: type "@" inside a note, pick a collaborator from the list, and WordPress sends them an email notification with a link back to the post.

Your teammate no longer needs to keep the editor open to know that feedback is waiting. The email brings them straight to the right place. You can also leave inline notes on specific sentences or phrases instead of attaching a comment to an entire block. The selection stays highlighted so everyone can see exactly which words the note refers to.

Other Notes improvements include multiple threads on the same block, text formatting (bold, italic, code, links, emoji), collapsible long notes, and exclusion from public comment feeds. For agencies and multi-author sites, this is the feature that makes the editor feel like a real workspace instead of a solo tool.

Revisions get shareable links

Visual revisions, introduced in 7.0, now support shareable links. Open the revisions screen, pick a version, copy the URL from your browser, and send it to a teammate. The link opens directly to that revision with changes highlighted. It sounds small, but if you have ever tried to explain "no, the version from yesterday morning, not the afternoon one" over Slack, you know why this matters.

The AI features that mostly did not ship

WordPress 7.0 introduced the AI Client and Connectors — a provider-agnostic foundation for AI features in core. The plan for 7.1 was to iterate on that foundation. Most of it did not land.

The AI Guidelines system, which would have created a structured place to define editorial rules and brand voice for both human editors and AI tools, was declined by project leadership on July 14. The reasoning was that AI features need real-world adoption before landing in core. The only AI-related change that made it into 7.1 is Connectors gaining username and app-password authentication, moving beyond plain API keys.

This is worth noting because it signals a deliberate slowdown on AI in WordPress core. The foundation is there, but the team is waiting to see how people actually use it before building more. If you want AI-powered editorial tools in WordPress right now, you are still looking at plugins.

Should you update?

Yes, but back up first. The responsive styling and interactive states alone are worth the upgrade for anyone who builds pages in the block editor. The Notes improvements matter if you work with a team. The security fixes in 7.0.3 (which are included in 7.1) are reason enough if you have not updated recently.

If you run a complex site with many plugins, test on staging first. The extended code freeze and four release candidates suggest this is a stable release, but the block editor changes are significant enough that a plugin conflict is not out of the question.

Update from your dashboard under Dashboard → Updates, or download directly from wordpress.org.