I spent years explaining to clients why they couldn’t use the shiny new Font Library just because their site was built on a “Classic” or “Hybrid” theme. It was a frustrating bottleneck for everyone involved. With the release of Gutenberg 22.4, that excuse has finally been buried, alongside several other major workflow improvements that actually matter to those of us writing code for a living.
This release merged a staggering 402 pull requests. While the marketing fluff will focus on “real-time collaboration,” seasoned developers should be looking at how Gutenberg 22.4 refines block bindings and responsive visibility. These aren’t just UI tweaks; they are structural changes to how we build and maintain client sites.
Pattern Overrides: Now Open for Custom Blocks
Since WordPress 6.5, Pattern Overrides have been a godsend for maintaining design consistency while allowing content flexibility. However, the catch was that they only worked with a handful of core blocks like Paragraph and Image. If you had a custom block with specific attributes, you were stuck in the dark.
In Gutenberg 22.4, the gate has been opened. Any block attribute that supports Block Bindings now supports Pattern Overrides by default. If you’re a block author, you can opt-in your attributes using a simple server-side filter. This turns Synced Patterns from a “sometimes useful” feature into a core architectural tool for custom themes.
// Example: Enabling Pattern Overrides for a custom block attribute
add_filter( 'block_bindings_supported_attributes', function( $attributes, $block_type ) {
if ( 'bbioon/custom-cta-block' === $block_type->name ) {
$attributes[] = 'customButtonText';
}
return $attributes;
}, 10, 2 );Classic Themes Finally Get the Font Library
If you’re still maintaining legacy sites—and let’s be honest, many of the most profitable ones are—the lack of Font Library support in classic themes was a major pain point. Gutenberg 22.4 fixes this by allowing classic and hybrid themes to access Global Styles and the Font Library through a dedicated admin section.
Furthermore, this isn’t just a UI port. The engineering team had to handle how these styles are enqueued without the typical block-theme runtime. It’s a significant win for typography management across the entire ecosystem.
Experimental: Block Visibility by Screen Size
We’ve been hacking this for years with custom CSS classes like .hide-on-mobile. Gutenberg 22.4 introduces an experimental feature to hide or show blocks based on the viewport directly in the editor. It includes a viewport modal for setting visibility rules and backend support for generating the necessary CSS.
Specifically, this uses the new CSS range syntax for media queries. While it’s tempting to jump in, remember this is experimental. I’ve seen enough race conditions with experimental CSS generators to tell you to test this thoroughly in a staging environment before letting a client touch it. If you’re looking for more stability in your current build, you might want to review our guide on cleaner block code.
Other Engineering Polish
- Image Focal Points: You can now set a focal point on any image to control cropping across different aspect ratios. This is a massive improvement for responsive hero sections.
- Query Loop Exclusions: You can finally exclude specific terms in the Query Loop block without writing a custom
pre_get_postshook. - Real-Time Collaboration: It moved out of experimental status. Note that there is no default provider yet, so you’ll need to wire up your own signaling server (like Yjs) if you want to use it today.
Look, if this Gutenberg 22.4 stuff is eating up your dev hours, let me handle it. I’ve been wrestling with WordPress since the 4.x days.
The Takeaway
Gutenberg 22.4 isn’t just about new buttons; it’s about bridge-building between the old ways (Classic themes) and the new ones (Block Bindings). Consequently, the gap between “Core WordPress” and “Custom Development” is getting smaller. Download the update, test the focal point controls, but keep a close eye on the experimental visibility features—they are powerful, but the implementation is still fresh.
