---
title: "Gutenberg 24.1: Design Tools Now Reach Almost Every Core Block (What You Still Need A Block Plugin For)"
url: https://nexterwp.com/blog/gutenberg-24-1/
date: 2026-10-01
modified: 2026-10-01
lang: en
author: "Aditya Sharma"
description: "Gutenberg 24.1 spreads background, shadow and border controls to far more core blocks. I counted the change on a real WordPress 7.1 site."
image: https://nexterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/gutenberg-24-1-featured-1024x538.jpg
word_count: 2200
---

# Gutenberg 24.1: Design Tools Now Reach Almost Every Core Block (What You Still Need A Block Plugin For)

## Key Takeaways

- Gutenberg 24.1 llega el 30 de septiembre de 2026 y extiende los controles de fondo, sombra, borde, color y tipografía a casi todos los bloques principales.
- WordPress 7.1 pasa de 6 a 69 bloques con soporte de fondo y de 11 a 52 con soporte de sombra cuando Gutenberg 24.1.0 está activo.
- Tabs gana en Gutenberg 24.1 controles nativos de imagen de fondo, color, degradado, padding, margin y block spacing, mientras Accordion añade soporte de fondo para accordion-item y accordion-panel.
- Paragraph y Heading son los únicos bloques que declaran soporte para text shadow en 24.1, y ese control aparece en el panel Typography y en Global Styles.
- Nexter Blocks sigue cubriendo trabajos que core no tiene en 24.1, como Flip Box, Pricing Table, form builder, popup builder, auto-generated table of contents, social feed, social reviews, social sharing, login and register, y bloques WooCommerce como quick view, wishlist y compare.

 

Gutenberg 24.1 shipped on September 30, 2026, and the release notes lead with a line that matters if you pay for a block plugin: about 140 pull requests went into making design tools consistent, so background, shadow, border, colour and typography controls now reach almost every core block. I wanted to know how big that change really is, so I installed Gutenberg 24.1.0 on a WordPress 7.1 test site and counted.

The short version: on plain WordPress 7.1, six core blocks declare background support and eleven declare shadow support. With the Gutenberg 24.1 plugin active, those numbers become 69 and 52. That is a genuine shift, and it removes one of the oldest reasons people installed a block library.

It does not remove every reason. This post shows what I measured, what the new controls look like in the editor, when you will get them without the plugin, and which jobs core still leaves to a block plugin.

Table of Contents

## What Gutenberg 24.1 Actually Ships

The official [What’s new in Gutenberg 24.1](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/09/30/whats-new-in-gutenberg-24-1-30-september/) post groups the release into three headline changes and a list of smaller ones. I read it on the day it was published and cross-checked each item against the editor on my test site.

- **More block design tools.** Accordion, Tabs, Comments, Post blocks and more get the same set of background and colour tools. Group, Post Author Biography and Terms List gain column support, and Tabs and Tab Panel gain typography controls.

- **Expanded text shadow.** Text shadow first arrived in Gutenberg 23.5. In 24.1 it is fully supported by theme.json, gets its own panel in Global Styles, and is available on the Paragraph and Heading blocks.

- **Media selection in the inspector.** The Cover and Media & Text blocks now let you pick media from the block inspector, matching the Image and Site Logo blocks.

- **Smaller items.** Start page patterns get category filtering and search, the Add Template modal shows template descriptions, position can be set per viewport, custom controls get a public API for viewport states, and the last 238 icons were redrawn as strokes.

The icon work finishes a redraw that [started in Gutenberg 24.0](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/09/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-24-0-16-september/). If you want the previous release in context, that post is the place to read it.

## I Counted What Changed On A Real WordPress 7.1 Install

Release notes tell you what the authors intended. I wanted the registered numbers, so I ran a small script in the block editor that reads every core block type and checks which support flags it declares. I ran it twice on the same site: once with the Gutenberg plugin deactivated (plain WordPress 7.1) and once with Gutenberg 24.1.0 active.

| What I counted | WordPress 7.1 core | With Gutenberg 24.1.0 |
| -------------- | ------------------ | --------------------- |
| Core block types registered | 115 | 116 |
| Blocks declaring background support | 6 | 69 |
| Blocks declaring shadow support | 11 | 52 |
| Blocks declaring text shadow support | 0 | 2 (Paragraph and Heading) |
| Tabs and Accordion blocks registered | Yes | Yes |
| Table of Contents block registered | No | Yes, but its block.json still says experimental |
Counted on October 1, 2026 from the block editor on a WordPress 7.1 test site, by reading each core block type's declared supports. This counts declared support, not whether every control is visible by default.

Two caveats keep this honest. A block that declares support can still hide the control behind the three-dot menu of a panel, so the editor shows fewer controls by default than the table implies. And these are block counts, not feature counts: a block that supports background can mean image, colour or gradient.

If you want to reproduce the count, open the block editor on any site, open the browser console and paste this. It reads the same flags I did.

`const t = wp.blocks.getBlockTypes().filter( b => b.name.startsWith( 'core/' ) );
const count = fn => t.filter( b => fn( b.supports || {} ) ).length;
console.log( {
total: t.length,
background: count( s => s.background ),
shadow: count( s => s.shadow ),
textShadow: count( s => s.typography && s.typography.textShadow ),
} );`

The Heading block is the clearest single example. On plain 7.1 it declares neither background nor shadow support. With 24.1 it declares background, shadow and text shadow. The one extra block type with the plugin active is Table of Contents, which I come back to below.

Even with those caveats, the jump from 6 to 69 is not subtle. Here is what it looks like on a Group block, which already had background support, so the screenshot below shows the controls that have long been there plus the ones that 24.1 spreads to other blocks.

![Gutenberg 24.1 Styles tab for a Group block showing Background, Dimensions, Borders and Shadow controls](https://nexterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/gutenberg-24-1-group-background-gradient-shadow.webp)The core Styles tab on a plain Group block in Gutenberg 24.1: background, dimensions, borders and shadow are all native controls.

A gradient, padding and a drop shadow on that Group took me about a minute and no stylesheet. That was already possible on Group. What changed in 24.1 is how many other blocks now behave the same way.

## Tabs And Accordion Finally Get Real Design Controls

WordPress 7.1 added the core Tabs block, and I covered what else shipped in 7.1 in [my WordPress 7.1 breakdown](https://nexterwp.com/blog/wordpress-7-1/). On plain 7.1, my count shows Tabs does not declare background or shadow support. With Gutenberg 24.1, it declares both.

![Gutenberg 24.1 inspector for the core Tabs block showing Background image, color and gradient plus Dimensions](https://nexterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/gutenberg-24-1-tabs-block-background-controls.webp)The core Tabs block in Gutenberg 24.1 gains background image, color and gradient tools alongside padding, margin and block spacing.

The Tabs inspector now offers background image, colour and gradient, plus the usual padding, margin and block spacing. That is the sort of control people used to reach a third party tabs block for, mostly so the tab panel could have its own background.

The Accordion block family was already ahead. In plain 7.1 my count shows the accordion block declares background support and the accordion, accordion-item, accordion-heading and accordion-panel blocks declare shadow support. What 24.1 adds there is background support on accordion-item and accordion-panel, so each part of an accordion can be styled on its own.

***Also Read:** [WordPress 7.1 Adds Tabs, but Not a Table of Contents](https://nexterwp.com/blog/do-you-still-need-a-gutenberg-blocks-plugin/) is the earlier audit of core versus a blocks plugin. This post is the follow-up for 24.1.*

## Text Shadow, Cover Media And Per Viewport Position

Text shadow is the new control I expect people to try first, because it used to need a line of custom CSS. In 24.1 it sits in the Typography panel of the Paragraph and Heading blocks.

![Gutenberg 24.1 Typography panel on a Paragraph block with the new Text shadow control](https://nexterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/gutenberg-24-1-paragraph-text-shadow.webp)Text shadow now sits in the Typography panel of the Paragraph block, next to color and font size.

In my script, only Paragraph and Heading declared text shadow support. If you were hoping to shadow text inside a Button or a Cover block with the same control, it is not there yet. That matches the release notes, which name only those two blocks.

The Cover block change is smaller but practical. Its inspector now has its own Media panel, so you no longer have to find the toolbar button to swap the background image or video.

![Gutenberg 24.1 Cover block inspector with a Media panel and Add media button](https://nexterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/gutenberg-24-1-cover-block-media-panel.webp)The Cover block inspector in Gutenberg 24.1 has its own Media panel, matching the Image and Site Logo blocks.

Position per viewport is the quiet one. It builds on the responsive styling that arrived in 7.1, which I walked through in [how to use responsive block styles in WordPress 7.1](https://nexterwp.com/blog/responsive-block-styles-wordpress/). I did not test viewport position in depth, so I am only repeating what the release notes say about it.

## Gutenberg Plugin Versus WordPress Core: When Do You Get This?

Everything above was measured with the Gutenberg plugin active. Plain WordPress 7.1 does not have it, and that is the number to plan around if you are deciding whether to remove a block plugin today.

Gutenberg features reach WordPress core when a core release bundles a newer Gutenberg. I could not find a statement of which Gutenberg version WordPress 7.2 will bundle, so I would not promise 24.1 features for 7.2. The 7.2 schedule and what is already planned are in [my WordPress 7.2 roadmap post](https://nexterwp.com/blog/wordpress-7-2/).

Running the Gutenberg plugin on a live site gives you these controls now, but it also gives you a release every two weeks, and I would keep it to staging sites. For a production site, the safe reading of this release is a preview of where core is heading.

## What Core Still Does Not Give You

Design controls were only ever part of what a block library sells. The other part is blocks that core has no equivalent for. Since Nexter Blocks is our plugin, here are the examples I could check directly on my test site, which runs Nexter Blocks Pro 5.0.6.

![Nexter Blocks Flip Box block with Style tab open showing front icon, front title and back description options](https://nexterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/nexter-blocks-flip-box-style-tab.webp)The Nexter Blocks Flip Box: a two-sided hover block with its own Style controls, something core has no block for.

The Flip Box is a two-sided block that turns over on hover. Core has no flip block, and 24.1's background and shadow controls do not change that: they style a container, they do not create the interaction.

![Nexter Blocks Pricing Table block in the editor with Style tab showing title, price and content area panels](https://nexterwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/nexter-blocks-pricing-table-style-tab.webp)The Nexter Blocks Pricing Table with Normal and Hover states per element, another block with no core equivalent.

The Pricing Table has the same story. You can build something that looks like one from Group and Paragraph blocks, but you then maintain the layout by hand. A dedicated block gives you title, price and content areas with Normal and Hover states for each.

My test install registered 116 core block types and 150 Nexter block types, counting inner and helper blocks, so the raw numbers are not comparable. What matters is the list of jobs. These all loaded in my editor and have no core counterpart in 24.1:

- A form builder with fields, steps and a submit button.

- A popup builder.

- An auto-generated table of contents block. Core's own Table of Contents block is still flagged `__experimental` in the 24.1 plugin, which I checked in its `block.json`.

- Social feed, social reviews and social sharing blocks.

- A login and register block.

- WooCommerce store blocks such as quick view, wishlist and compare.

Tiers matter here. The [free versus Pro page](https://nexterwp.com/free-vs-pro/) is the source of truth for which of these are free. In my last audit the table of contents, form builder and popup builder were Pro, and plans started at $39 a year, which you can confirm on the [pricing page](https://nexterwp.com/pricing/).

There is one more thing I noticed that is easy to miss. On my test site, selecting a plain core Group block shows a Nexter Display Rules panel in its Settings tab. That means a plugin can add behaviour to core blocks without replacing them, which is a different job from the design tools core is absorbing.

### If You Already Use Nexter Blocks

Nothing changes for you today. Core design controls apply to core blocks, and Nexter blocks keep their own panels, so both can sit on the same page. My advice is to decide where each kind of style lives, for example brand colours and text shadow in Global Styles and component styling inside the Nexter block, so you can find a setting again in six months.

The more useful habit is to watch the Gutenberg release notes every two weeks. Each release can move a styling job from a plugin into core, and the notes tell you which blocks and which controls before you rebuild anything.

## Should You Remove Your Block Plugin Now?

Not because of 24.1 alone. The honest decision path is short:

- List which blocks from your plugin appear on published pages. Search your content for the block prefix instead of guessing.

- Cross off anything that is only a styling control: background, shadow, border, spacing, typography. Those are what core is absorbing.

- Check the survivors. Interactive blocks, forms, popups, a table of contents, dynamic content and commerce blocks are the jobs core does not do.

- Wait for the controls to land in a stable WordPress release before you rebuild pages. Test the move on a staging copy first.

If your plugin is Spectra Legacy and you want out, the steps are different, and I wrote them up in [how to move from Spectra Legacy to Nexter Blocks](https://nexterwp.com/blog/migrate-from-spectra-legacy/). If you are comparing libraries instead of leaving them, [the GenerateBlocks alternatives guide](https://nexterwp.com/blog/generateblocks-alternatives/) covers the field.

***Also Read:** [What Is Gutenberg?](https://nexterwp.com/blog/what-is-gutenberg/) is the plain-language primer if you are new to the editor.*

## What This Doesn't Cover

- I did not test every core block. I counted declared support flags for all of them, but I opened the inspector on only a handful.

- I did not measure front-end performance, so I make no claim that core controls are lighter or heavier than a plugin's.

- I did not test Gutenberg 24.1 against other block plugins' output. Compatibility with third party blocks is worth checking on staging.

- I did not compare Nexter Blocks with competing libraries feature by feature. That needs each vendor's changelog on the day you read this.

- I do not know which Gutenberg version WordPress 7.2 will bundle, and I have not guessed.

## Suggested Reading

- [WordPress 7.1 Adds Tabs, but Not a Table of Contents](https://nexterwp.com/blog/do-you-still-need-a-gutenberg-blocks-plugin/)

- [How to Use Responsive Block Styles in WordPress 7.1](https://nexterwp.com/blog/responsive-block-styles-wordpress/)

- [WordPress 7.2: Release Date, Ipsum Theme, and Every Feature on the Roadmap](https://nexterwp.com/blog/wordpress-7-2/)

- [WordPress 7.1: What’s New and What Got Deferred](https://nexterwp.com/blog/wordpress-7-1/)

- [What Is Gutenberg?](https://nexterwp.com/blog/what-is-gutenberg/)

To see the blocks above in a real editor, start with [Nexter Blocks](https://nexterwp.com/nexter-blocks/), or read the [Nexter Theme](https://nexterwp.com/nexter-theme/) page if you want a block theme to go with them.

[Explore Nexter Blocks](https://nexterwp.com/nexter-blocks/)

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