Gutenslider 7.0 is out. The editor and the front end are rebuilt, the free plugin does more than before, and Pro gets new effects. Sliders you built with 5.x and 6.x keep working: update, and they look as they did.
A new editor
The slider in the editor now looks the way it looks on the page. Its arrows and dots page through the slides while you edit, and the Preview button runs the real slider, with its effect and autoplay, right in the editor. The device switch in the settings follows the editor’s preview device, and the content position is a 3 × 3 matrix in the toolbar. You can turn a Gallery, Image or Cover block into a slider, and a slider back into a Gallery.
A faster front end
7.0 drops jQuery, lightGallery and the parallax library. The slider script loads when a slider comes near the screen, with only the parts that slider uses. The layout is rendered on the server, so nothing jumps when the script arrives, and the first image loads with high priority while the rest wait. All CSS is one file of about 7 KB gzipped.
On the same test pages, mobile Lighthouse went from a performance score of 66–88 with 6.1.2 to 95–99 with 7.0. The largest contentful paint dropped from about 3.9 s to 2.1–3.2 s, and the layout shift from 0.52 to 0. Autoplay, parallax and the WebGL transitions respect “reduce motion”.
More in the free plugin
- Video slides, color and gradient overlays
- Shape dividers at the top and bottom, with color and flip
- All 11 arrow styles, space between slides and up to eight slides in view
- The lightbox, rebuilt on the browser’s own
<dialog>: the image grows out of its place, and visitors page with arrows, keys or a swipe, in a light or dark look
No watermark, no account, no trial. See every example on the examples page.
New in Pro
- Six shaped effects, such as fan, morph and tilt
- Twenty WebGL transitions
- Animated dots: a pill and lines with progress
- Lightbox options: thumbnails, zoom, captions from the Media Library, a fade opening and your own colors
Pro now comes monthly or yearly, for one site, up to three sites or unlimited sites, from $2.99 a month; there is also a lifetime license. If you already have a license, it works with 7.0 as it is, and your subscription keeps the price you signed up with. Sliders built with Pro never break when a license ends. See Pro and pricing.
Updating from 6.x
The block names, every saved setting and the front-end class names stay the same. Old sliders open in the new editor without “Attempt recovery”; 22 migration tests check this on content saved with 5.x and 6.x. If you use custom CSS for lightGallery or JavaScript on the Swiper instance, read Migrating from 6.x to 7.0 first. As with any update, back up the site before you start.
Gutenslider 7.0 needs WordPress 6.6 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer. Getting started covers the install; the changelog lists every change.
Thank you
Many of the changes come from your reports and requests in the support forum. Thank you for your patience while 7.0 was in the making. Questions or problems: the support forum, or email for Pro users.