Classic Widgets

Oleh Tonya Mork

Description

Classic Widgets is an official plugin maintained by the WordPress team that restores the previous (“classic”) WordPress widgets settings screens. It will be supported and maintained to 2024, or as long as is necessary.

Once activated and when using a classic (non-block) theme, this plugin restores the previous widgets settings screens and disables the block editor from managing widgets. There is no other configuration, the classic widgets settings screens are enabled or disabled by either enabling or disabling this plugin.

FAQ

Are there any settings?: No, there are no settings. Once activated, this plugin restores the previous (“classic”) WordPress widgets screen and disables the block editor from managing widgets.
Does this work with full site editing and block themes?: No, as block themes rely on blocks. See Block themes article for more information.

Reviews

jrulcova 8 Februari 2026

Great widget plugin. The widgets are flexible, easy to style, and they do not slow down the site.

17 April 2025

Useful, but needs an update now, as the Classic bar does not remain sticky now with the latest WP 6.8 update.

Sepi 7 April 2025

Thanks to this plugin, I no longer get a headache from looking at the widgets page.

Helison S. Cruz 4 April 2025

Hello, guys from WordPress Team. I want to thank you for keeping this plugin active until today. I started to really like the block scheme within the posts (especially for those who like to develop their own blocks like me), but here in the widgets I think the application of the blocks didn’t work very well. You could create something similar to the old widget system, but without blocks. The cool thing about widgets was that they were easy to manipulate and allowed for faster customization within limits. The blocks in this part of the widgets became confusing and difficult to manage.

Quotes Ninja 29 Mac 2025

I’m using this plugin because of simplicity and for classic experience.

Erez Speiser 16 Februari 2025

I experience from time to time glitches with the widgets block system and never got to like it. Lately, it got worse to the point that I could not add/edit my widgets, getting all kinds of errors and strange behavior. I must say I was panicked because it was a huge issue for me. After some research I found out the plugin that rolls us back to sanity. The fact that it has 2M installations and a 5-star rating clearly means that WP made a lousy move with introducing the blocks into the widgets. I hope they will take this seriously.

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