Gutenslider Changelog – What’s New in Gutenslider 7

Changelog

What changed in each version. The full list is in the plugin’s readme on wordpress.org.

7.3.5

Autoplay for visitors who prefer reduced motion.

“Autoplay for visitors who prefer reduced motion” (Advanced): autoplay stops for visitors whose system asks for less motion; with this on, it keeps running and the slides change without a transition. Off by default.
Fix: dots at the side of the slider no longer leave a gap for arrows that are hidden at that screen size.

Fixes from the support forum.

Fix: background images set to “cover” are sharp on phones and in tall or full-screen sliders. The browser loads a file as wide as the image is drawn, not one as wide as the slide.
Fix: the arrows, dots and screen reader announcements are in the site’s language (they were always English).
Fix: “Random order” with optimizers that combine and defer inline scripts (LiteSpeed Cache): no console error, and the order is still random.

A Live Preview on wordpress.org, and vertical sliders in Pro.

The plugin page on wordpress.org has a Live Preview: try Gutenslider in WordPress Playground, with a demo page of sliders, before you install it.
Pro: vertical sliders. “Vertical” in the Motion panel moves the slides up and down, at the slider’s height (with the Slide, Fade and Flip effects).

Fix: the divider color picker follows the pointer while dragging; divider colors can be partly transparent now.
Fix: arrows that follow the pointer (Pro) with the lightbox on: the left and right thirds turn the slide, the middle third opens the lightbox.

After activation, Gutenslider asks once whether you want to opt in to update and security emails through Freemius; nothing is sent unless you allow it, and “Skip” keeps it that way.
The plugin directory lists the Slide block again, next to Gutenslider.

More of Gutenslider is free.

Now free: the flip effect, transition time and time per slide, arrow positions, offsets, spacing and blend mode, dot positions and offset, divider height and invert, lightbox thumbnails, heading and text, the fade opening and lightbox colors, and blend modes and opacity for the slide content.
The free plugin reads YouTube playlists from their public feed (the newest 15 videos); Pro reads the playlist page (up to 100) and finds Shorts from any link.
Fix: a slider with a spacing preset as block gap works on PHP 7.4 again.
Swiper 14.3.0.

Content width, an easier first click in the editor, and fixes.

“Content width” (Slides panel): in a full-width slider the blocks line up with the theme’s wide or content width, like the header and the page’s text, while the photo stays full width. See the example.
In the editor the first click on a slider selects the slider, not the slide or block under the pointer; the next click reaches them.
Fix: photos chosen in the Media Library or uploaded into a new slider become image slides again; in 7.1.0 they turned into empty video slides.
Fix: in a looped slider with few slides, the copies the loop shows after the last slide take clicks again: the lightbox opens the right photo, and links and video controls work.
Fix: arrows that follow the pointer (Pro) show again.
Fix: when YouTube briefly fails to send a playlist, the newest videos are kept for 10 minutes instead of an hour.

Video from any link, and more ways to place a slide’s blocks.

“Add videos from links” in the slider toolbar: YouTube videos and playlists and links to video files; with Pro YouTube channels, Vimeo, Dailymotion and TikTok. Per link: how many videos (1–50), in which order, with or without Shorts. See the example.
“Play videos when their slide shows” for the whole slider (a slide can set its own), and one sound for all videos of a slider: mute or set the volume in one, the others follow.
On phones the arrows and dots fade over a playing video, clear of the player’s controls, and come back on touch, pointer movement or keyboard focus.
The slide’s blocks can sit below or above the image instead of on it; with Pro, arrows next to the blocks.
The lightbox also opens Image and Video blocks on slides. “Link images to the file”, for lightbox plugins that open linked images.
Random order, and an arrow style with text labels (“Previous”, “Next”) in the site’s font.
Pro: lightbox zoom opens a full view; a click zooms in where you click.
Fixes for width from content with loop or on one device only, dots at the side and on the right, and replacing a slide’s image in the editor.

A rebuild of the editor and the front end. Sliders saved with 5.x and 6.x keep their settings and open without changes.

The editor canvas shows the slider styled as the page does; its arrows and dots page through the slides while you edit.
A Preview button runs the real slider, with its effect and autoplay, inside the editor.
The device switch follows the editor’s preview device.
Content position as a matrix in the toolbar; add slides from the Media Library or empty.
Transforms from the Gallery, Image and Cover blocks, and back to a Gallery.
Old content opens unchanged, without “Attempt recovery”: covered by 27 migration tests.

An Interactivity API module instead of jQuery. Swiper 14 loads when a slider comes near the screen, with only the modules that slider uses.
The layout is rendered on the server before any script runs: no layout shift.
The first slide image loads with high priority, the rest lazily, with responsive sizes.
Mobile Lighthouse on the same pages: performance 66–88 → 95–99, largest contentful paint about 3.9 s → 2.1–3.2 s, layout shift 0.52 → 0.
Parallax with CSS instead of a library; autoplay and parallax respect “reduce motion”.

Video slides (Media Library or YouTube), color and gradient overlays, shape dividers (15 shapes, color, flip), the 11 arrow styles, space between slides and up to eight slides per view.
Content position for all slides at once and automatic captions from the Media Library.
A lightbox built on the browser’s <dialog> element, opening out of the clicked image, with a counter, swipe, keys and a light or dark look. It replaces lightGallery.

Six shaped effects: morph, parallax, tilt, fan, stack and reveal.
Twenty WebGL transitions, from liquid and ripple to pixelate and glitch; a crossfade with reduced motion.
Animated dots: a pill that slides along, and lines that fill up over the autoplay time.
Lightbox options: thumbnails, zoom, captions, a fade opening and your own colors.
A lapsed license never breaks a slider: everything saved with Pro keeps rendering.

The last 6.x release. See the development log on wordpress.org for 6.x and earlier.