CKEditor 5 changelog

This is the CKEditor 5 changelog guide. Here you will find information about the most important changes introduced in the release, new features, and bug fixes.

Information about both major and minor breaking changes is available, too, if the release introduces them. You can read more about breaking changes in CKEditor 5 in the Versioning policy guide.

You can find more information about each release in the blog posts linked at the start of each entry.

This guide provides the changelog information for the 3 latest releases of CKEditor 5. For older releases, refer to the release notes on GitHub.

We are happy to announce the release of CKEditor 5 v47.4.0.

This is a minor update focused on improving content editing workflows and data compatibility. We are introducing better visualization for table borders, enhanced image alignment handling, and several improvements to AI and email features.

We are introducing an experimental tableCellTypeSupport flag that enables changing table cell types between data and header cells (th). This feature provides more flexibility when working with complex table structures. Read more about how to enable it in the update guide.

We are introducing a new config.table.showHiddenBorders configuration option (enabled by default) that helps editors work with tables that have hidden borders. When the editor detects inline border:none or border-style:none declarations on table and cell elements, it renders dashed helper borders in the editing view. This makes it easier to see the table structure while editing without affecting the output data. For strict WYSIWYG scenarios where you want the editing view to match the output exactly, this visualization can be disabled.

We improved the email styles transformation with better appearance of resized inline images in classic Outlook clients. Additionally, the new optional useFigureToTableFallback flag in the email styles transformers can replace figure (block images) with tables to improve alignment and width handling in older email clients with limited CSS support.

• Fixed multiple issues in the AI features, including improved tooltips for web search sources in AI Chat, proper handling of Quick Actions when opening the AI Chat panel, resolved loading state issues in the AI Review sidebar, and others.
• The editor now recognizes CSS float style on images (e.g., style="float: left" or style="float: right") and automatically maps it to left/right image alignment. This works for both inline and block images, improving compatibility when pasting content from external sources or loading legacy content. If custom image styles are configured, they take precedence over the float style.
• The Emoji plugin can now be used with the Emoji v17.0 dataset, which has been uploaded to the CKEditor CDN. This update does not change the default emoji version used by CKEditor.

Please note that the old installation methods will only remain available up to CKEditor 5 v48.0.0, which is planned for release at the beginning of Q2 2026. For more timeline details, refer to the dedicated GitHub issue.

In CKEditor 5 v42.0.0 in June 2024, we introduced new installation methods designed to improve and simplify the developer workflow. Soon, they will be the only available paths to install and use CKEditor 5.

If your project still relies on old installation methods, now is a good time to plan your next steps. We recommend choosing between these two options:

1. Migrate to the new installation methods, which are the recommended path for most users. The new installation methods provide a cleaner setup, easier upgrades, and better alignment with future CKEditor 5 releases.
2. Consider CKEditor 5 Long Term Support (LTS). If migrating in the near term is not feasible, you can extend support for legacy installation methods.

• table, theme-lark: Added support for visualizing hidden table and table cell borders through a new configuration option: table.showHiddenBorders (enabled by default). The editor now detects inline border:none and border-style:none declarations on table and cell elements and renders dashed helper borders in the editing view. This visualization can be disabled for strict WYSIWYG scenarios. Closes #19039.

• ai: Added a new tooltip for web search sources in the AI Chat.

  The tooltip now displays the full link, favicon, and link title.

• email: Added an inline-styles transformation that improves the appearance of resized inline images in classic Outlook clients.

  Additionally, introduced an optional useFigureToTableFallback flag in the email inline-styles transformers. When enabled, figures (block images) are replaced with tables to improve alignment and width handling in older email clients that have limited CSS support. This enhances compatibility but adds extra markup, which may affect layout in some cases.

• emoji: The Emoji plugin can now be used together with the Emoji v17.0 dataset, which has been uploaded to the CKEditor CDN. This update does not change the default emoji version used by CKEditor. Closes #19394.

• basic-styles, icons: Fixed the superscript and footnote icons to properly inherit colors from CSS instead of using hardcoded fill values. Closes #19464.

• email, export-inline-styles: Fixed incorrect table alignment in Classic Outlook when exporting inline styles with getEmailInlineStylesTransformations.

• paste-from-office, table: The editor no longer crashes when calling getData() on content containing a table with custom styling, provided that the TablePropertiesEditing and PlainTableOutput plugins are loaded without the TableProperties plugin. Closes #19512.

• code-block, typing: Fixed an error thrown when creating a code block via backticks on some keyboard layouts (e.g. US International). Closes #18926.

• engine, undo: Fixed a bug where undoing changes to root attributes (e.g. the order attribute) would not restore the correct value. Closes #19483.

• ai: AI Review sidebar is no longer stuck in loading state for specific AI API responses with no real changes in the content.

• ai: AI Chat related Quick Actions now open the AI Chat if it is closed or if another tab is currently active.

• ai: The AI feature now functions correctly when used with the Title plugin.

• ai: The document will no longer be added to the context automatically when it is disabled via the ai.chat.context.document.enabled config.

• ai: Quick Actions that use AI Chat are now hidden when the document context is disabled via the ai.chat.context.document.enabled config, as they require the document to function properly.

• ai: Editor toolbar is now always visible when AI Review suggestion is accepted or dismissed.

• footnotes: The footnotes’ definitions are no longer lost when pasting content that lacks the application/ckeditor5-footnotes data but contains footnote references and definitions. The plugin now extracts and merges footnote definitions from the pasted content, ensuring that existing footnotes are preserved and new ones are added correctly.

• image: The editor and its UI now recognize the CSS float style on images (e.g. style="float: left" or style="float: right") and map it to left/right image alignment. This applies to both inline and block images. If custom image styles are configured, then the float style is ignored. Closes #19521.

• link: Fixed an issue where setting editor data with multiple images or images mixed with text inside a single link would result in only the first image being preserved and the rest of the content being removed. Closes #18961.

• media-embed: Added a strict-origin-when-cross-origin attribute to the iframe tag when embedding YouTube videos. It corresponds with the YouTube documentation and resolves occurrences of error 153 when embedding YouTube videos.

  Thanks to @ampaze.

• pagination: Fixed a crash in pagination that occurred when a to-do list item was the first element in the editor.

• pagination: Fixed an issue with the incorrect order of page breaks for tables containing specific data.

• revision-history: Stopped the revision history loading overlay spinner from animating while hidden. Closes ckeditor/ckeditor5#19558.

• table: Fixed incorrect table rows moving as header row when preceding rows are not header rows. Closes #19431.

• table: The default alignment for table headers in the output has been set to left to match the editing view and ensure consistent rendering across all browsers. Closes #19454.

• typing: Disable text transformations inside inline code so automatic text transformation does not convert typed text. Closes #19557.

• ui: Guarded dropdown panel selection handling against non-element targets to avoid errors when selecting text. Closes #19565.

• ai: The Track Changes suggestion markers are always grayed out in AI review, even if active.

  This makes it easier to navigate when review check is active in content with many Track Changes suggestions and keeps full focus on changes created by AI.

• ai: AI models displayed in Review and Chat are now sorted by their model family.

• core: The Editor class constructor now detects if the provided EditorConfig is not an object. Closes #18072.

  The common source of this error is when an editor class (e.g., ClassicEditor) is mistakenly included in the plugins list when initializing Editor.

• table: Introduced the experimental tableCellTypeSupport flag to enable changing table cell types between data and header. To use this change, besides the flag, the TablePropertiesUIExperimental and TableCellPropertiesUIExperimental plugins must be used. See #16730.

• Removes operation and time limits from trial license.

We are happy to announce the release of CKEditor 5 v47.3.0.

This release introduces a minor stability update, featuring focused fixes and improvements, as well as experimental features.

Finding a specific AI Quick Action in a long list with multiple groups can be difficult. To improve this, we are adding a filter input that lets users search for quick actions directly within the dropdown.

Visibility of the input can be easily configured using the config.ai.quickActions.isSearchEnabled configuration option.

This release also brings several minor but significant enhancements and fixes:

• Track Changes markers not related to AI suggestions are now displayed in gray in the AI balloon text preview, consistent with the behavior of AI chat.
• When retrying a specific AI Review, we are now ensuring the latest version of the document is used.
• We also improved error handling across CKEditor AI, making it easier to debug backend-related issues by including more detailed error messages.

We keep our LTS version promise: no breaking changes until the Active LTS moves to Maintenance LTS phase (April 2026). It also means that introducing larger features can be challenging if someone is waiting for specific improvements.

To address this, we are introducing experimental flags and experimental plugins. These options allow you to preview and test upcoming changes.

• New table alignment options

  Enable config.experimentalFlags.useExtendedTableBlockAlignment and load the experimental UI plugins TablePropertiesUIExperimental and TableCellPropertiesUIExperimental for upcoming improvements to table block alignment.

  The TableProperties and TableCellProperties plugins already include their standard UI counterparts (TablePropertiesUI and TableCellPropertiesUI). To avoid conflicts, when using experimental UI plugins, you must load the editing plugins (TablePropertiesEditing, TableCellPropertiesEditing) and the experimental UI plugins separately, instead of using the “glue” plugins.

  New options allow setting left and right table block alignment without text wrapping and resolve issues such as #3225. We also improved table properties and cell properties balloon interfaces. This change will be the default in version 48.0.0.

• Improved table border normalization

  Setting config.experimentalFlags.upcastTableBorderZeroAttributes enables support for the normalization of HTML tables that use border="0". This change will be the default in version 48.0.0.

• Better deep schema validation

  After enabling the config.experimentalFlags.modelInsertContentDeepSchemaVerification flag, the editor performs deep schema verification during model.insertContent() operations. This ensures that the inserted content fully follows the editor’s schema, even in complex or nested structures. This change will be the default in version 48.0.0.

Read more about these experimental features in the documentation.

• ai: The AI balloon contents is always scrolled to the bottom, so the most recent content is always visible to the user.
• ai: AI Quick Actions are now searchable in the dropdown. Search input can be hidden using the config.ai.quickActions.isSearchEnabled configuration option.
• restricted-editing: Introducing an automatic command (restrictedEditingExceptionAuto) and dedicated toolbar button (restrictedEditingException:auto) for creating restricted editing exceptions (both block and inline). Closes #19353.

• ai: AI Review now uses the latest editor content when the review check was retried (via “Try again” button).

  This improvement fixes the issue when cached content was send on retry and any new changes, applied review suggestions or changes made by other users in real-time collaboration, were not sent and accounted by AI when generating new results.

• ai: AI Review no longer results in an error when the AI service returns an unexpected response (multiple elements when one is expected).

• ai: Track Changes markers not related to AI suggestions are now displayed in gray in AI balloon text preview, consistent with AI chat behavior.

• ai: The translate check in AI Review now correctly translates the image alt attribute text.

• ai: The caption of images (<figcaption> element) is now correctly processed by AI Review checks instead of being ignored.

• ai: Errors caused by AI feature during initialization no longer crash the editor.

• ai: The AI feature keeps the correct UI state after a runtime error occurs.

• ai: The AI Review “Custom command” is hidden if the model list cannot be obtained.

• ai: Error messages in AI Chat History are now displayed correctly. Previously, errors caused the history view to appear empty instead of showing the error message.

• ai: AI suggestions balloon content no longer stick out of the balloon on very small screens.

• ckbox: Fixed CKBox Image Editor not respecting the language configuration option. Closes #19338.

• comments: Fixed an issue where the comment toolbar button remained enabled even when the command to create a new comment thread was disabled (e.g., in read-only mode).

• comments: Disabled revision history toolbar and menu bar buttons in comments-only mode to prevent users from using revision history features.

• footnotes: Fixed an issue where cutting and pasting an empty footnotes list in the middle of a paragraph would incorrectly split the paragraph.

• footnotes: Fixed an issue where the content of pasted footnotes was lost when the multiBlock configuration option was disabled.

• footnotes: Fixed incorrect start number shown in footnotes UI when loading a document with existing footnotes.

• footnotes: Footnote lists styled with alpha-lower and alpha-upper are now correctly highlighted in the footnotes UI.

• line-height: When line height is applied to a to-do list item, the checkbox is now vertically centered correctly.

• pagination: Improved calculation of page breaks when long tables are present in the content.

• revision-history: Fixed an issue where revision history buttons remained incorrectly enabled in read-only mode in the menubar.

• table: Fixed an issue where tables with merged cells ([rowspan]) in header columns were not handled correctly. Closes #14826.

  Thanks to @bendemboski.

• ai: Review suggestions can now be previewed by hovering over changes in the content, significantly enhancing the review process.

• ai: Stopping generation in AI chat now clears the selection from the pending context.

• ai: Custom AI quick actions referencing unavailable models are now disabled.

  They are displayed as grayed out, and an error is logged to the console during the editor initialization to help integrators detect and fix the issue before it impacts end-users.

• ai: Removed misleading console warnings that appeared during AI response streaming.

• ai: Error messages concerning the AI feature logged in the browser console now contain the details provided by the backend service.

• engine: Introduced the experimentalFlags configuration option that allows enabling or disabling specific experimental behaviors in CKEditor 5. Closes #19217.

  Added a new experimental flag: modelInsertContentDeepSchemaVerification. When enabled, the editor performs a deep schema verification
  during model.insertContent() operations, ensuring that inserted content fully complies with the editor’s schema even in complex
  or nested contexts.

• list: Added support for passing consume parameter to ListEditing#registerDowncastStrategy method which allows to control whether the downcasted element should be consumed or not. It also disables consume checks for the downcasted element to allow defining side effects without consuming the model attribute.

• table: Introduced the experimental useExtendedTableBlockAlignment flag enabling block table alignments. Updated table balloons to reflect this behavior and better match the editor design, visible when using the new TablePropertiesUIExperimental and TableCellPropertiesUIExperimental plugins. See #3225.

• table: Added experimental support for importing HTML tables with the [border="0"] attribute. Tables with this attribute are now automatically converted to borderless tables in the editor by applying border-style: none to both table and table cell elements. Closes #19038.

  This change needs to be enabled by setting experimentalFlags.upcastTableBorderZeroAttributes to true. In the next major release, this flag will be removed and the upcast will be performed by default.

• The development environment for CKEditor 5 now requires Node v24.11.

We are introducing CKEditor AI, a powerful writing assistant that brings AI-powered content creation directly into CKEditor 5. It helps users create, review, and refine content without switching between tools, making the editing experience faster and more productive.

CKEditor AI includes three core capabilities:

• AI Chat: a conversational AI assistant for multi-turn interactions that supports context setting and model selection. All conversations are tracked in a persistent chat history, and suggestions are reviewable before being applied.
• AI Quick Actions: one-click transformations for selected text, including rewriting, simplifying, expanding, summarizing, or adjusting tone. Changes appear inline with preview capabilities.
• AI Review: automatic quality assurance that checks grammar, tone, clarity, and style across the document. Suggested changes are presented in a visual review interface where users can accept or reject individual edits or apply all approved suggestions in bulk.

Power users can select their preferred model during sessions (GPT-5, Claude 3.5, Gemini 2.5, and more), while integrators maintain control over access rules and usage tiers.

Built as a plugin for CKEditor 5, it integrates quickly into existing applications with minimal configuration, and all AI interactions are fully observable via audit logs and optional APIs.

CKEditor AI is available as a premium add-on to all paid CKEditor 5 plans with a transparent subscription-plus-usage pricing model. A 14-day trial is available with access to all premium features.

A brand-new Footnotes feature is here! It lets users insert and manage footnotes directly in their content, keeping references organized and readable. Footnotes stay linked to their source text and update automatically when edited, ideal for academic, legal, or technical writing. You can also customize the numbering, including the starting number and numbering style, to match your document’s formatting needs.

Restricted editing now supports block-level restrictions, not just inline ones. This makes it easier to protect the entire content while still allowing controlled edits where required. A common use case is unlocking for editing template sections like paragraphs, tables, or structured document parts, and protecting the rest of the content.

We are extending the sunset period for old installation methods (#17779) to the end of Q1 2026. It is a good moment to consider switching to the LTS edition for long-term stability and an additional 3 years of support for the old installation methods.

This release also brings several smaller but important enhancements and fixes:

• View engine stability: Fixed a bug where placeholders could remain visible after view changes, such as moving or replacing elements.
• Downcast reliability: The elementToStructure helper now handles nested structures and list elements more consistently, ensuring correct reconversion and structure maintenance.

• ai: Added a new configuration option, config.ai.chat.context.searchInputVisibleFrom, to manage the visibility of the search input in the AI Chat context panel.
• footnotes: Added a new package @ckeditor/ckeditor5-footnotes that provides the footnotes feature. This feature allows users to add and manage footnotes in their documents, enhancing the document’s readability and providing additional context where necessary.
• fullscreen: Enabled CKEditor AI support in Fullscreen mode, allowing users to access AI tools while editing in fullscreen. Closes #19234.
• fullscreen: Sidebars in the fullscreen mode will now automatically collapsed and expanded depending on the available space in the viewport. Closes #19294.
• restricted-editing: Introduced block editable areas in restricted editing. Closes #9071, #5953.

• ai: If the content you were working on in AI Balloon gets removed (for example, by another user), a proper message will appear with the information and prevent further actions that could lead to errors.

• ai: Conversations loaded from AI Chat History are now correctly scrolled to the last message.

• ai: Fixed visual inconsistencies of hover state in AI Chat.

• ai: Fixed visual inconsistencies in AI Chat context section.

• ai: Fixed AI Chat resize button hover and active visual states.

• ai: Fixed various visual issues across the AI feature.

• ai: Fixed an issue where using DLLs for the AI package together with the TrackChanges plugin could fail due to a DocumentCompare plugin conflict.

• ai: Removed doubled border at the bottom of review mode suggestions list.

• ai: The styles in the AI feature operate independently from one another.

• ai: Prevent editor crash on exiting pending AI review check.

• ai: Configuration option ai.availableReplyActions will now also impact visibility of buttons displayed next to “Change X” header, which are displayed in AI Chat feed when AI returns multiple changes.

• ai: Fixed handling inline objects (such as inline images) by AI Review. Inline objects were incorrectly presented in the AI Review sidebar, and often were removed from the editor content upon accepting a change next to it.

• ai: When a user applied and then undone an AI-proposed change, which has affected existing markers, these markers were incorrectly removed instead of being restored.

• ai: Improved AI Review content processing mechanism preventing some errors originating from unexpected LLM responses.

• ai: Improved the positioning of the model selection dropdown in the AI Chat feature to ensure it remains visible when space is limited.

• ai: Navigation across changes proposed in AI Chat should not break if unsupported changes (which cannot be displayed) were returned by the agent.

• ai: Fixed crash happening when an AI-proposed change, that included an existing suggestion, was itself inserted as a suggestion.

• ai: The CKEditor AI balloon displaying content changes should remain within the viewport boundaries when used with long content selections in the editor.

• ai: The AI balloon with suggested content changes should always position itself next to the relevant piece of content in the editor during navigation across multiple changes.

• clipboard: The drop marker is now shown only when the target range is editable. Dropping content into non-editable is now prevented. Closes #19028.

• engine: The elementToStructure downcast helper created elements should work more reliably in various edge cases: Closes #16055, #15919, #11739, #19209.

  • It should properly detect required reconversion on all nesting levels.
  • It should use proper position inside slot to maintain proper view structure.
  • It should refresh child elements when they got renamed, for example paragraph to heading.
  • It should work correctly with lists inside.
  • It should create proper structure with list inside.

• engine: The model.insertContent() and model.insertObject() should verify the whole Schema context before checking auto-paragraphing. Closes #19210.

• engine: Fixed a bug where placeholders could become stuck and remain visible on elements when the view changed. Closes #14354, #18149.

  This resolves two scenarios:

  • Dropping an image into the editor before an element with a placeholder (the placeholder could remain on the original element).
  • Moving the element that hosts the placeholder to a different place in the view tree (the placeholder could stay attached to the old node).

• icons: Removed obsolete clip-path attributes from various SVG icons (IconAIHistory, IconShowChangesOff, IconShowChangesOn, IconUploadcareImageUpload) that cause rendering issues in some corner cases. Closes #19291.

• pagination: Fixed an issue where the pagination feature incorrectly displayed redundant page break indicators in editing mode when a page break was inserted between two tables.

• paste-from-office: No longer treat elements with mso-list:none as list items.

• restricted-editing: Empty editable regions created with Restricted Editing should not get dropped when reloading the editor’s data. Closes #16376.

• restricted-editing: Backspace should remove content in restricted editing mode when the entire section is selected. Closes #18892.

• table: The editor should not crash when trying to load data with a table inside an image caption. Closes #19211.

• table: The TableConfig type is no longer exported as internal.

• widget: Fixed changing (expanding and shrinking) the selection with the keyboard while widgets are involved. Closes #19212.

• ai, track-changes: CKEditor AI no longer requires the Track Changes feature, and can be used without it. In such setup, CKEditor AI will not be able to insert AI-proposed changes as suggestions and all related buttons will be hidden.

• ai: Renamed the automatically selected AI model to “Auto” (previously “Agent”). Allowed for using 'auto' in config.ai.chat.models.defaultModelId and config.ai.chat.models.displayedModels configurations to make integration easier.

• ai: Improved real-time collaboration support in AI Review. Changes adjacent or within review suggestions in the editor content, made by remote users, will correctly invalidate/restore review suggestions.

• ai: Added missing AISuggestionActionName export, which is used in the CKEditor AI feature configuration.

• ai: AI Review suggestions now remain visible after being accepted or rejected, also can be marked as outdated if they are affected by RTC changes.

• clipboard: Loosened rules for drop target position lookup so it is possible to drop in-text when there is anything droppable into in-text context.

• icons: Added IconDocumentOutlineToggle icon.

• icons: Introducing an icon that represents an outdated state. Closes #19282.

• paste-from-office: Added normalization of footnotes while pasting content from Word.

• table: Fixed incorrect Japanese translations for table layout feature. Closes #19255.

  Thanks to @ponyoxa.

• uploadcare: Added a configuration option config.uploadcare.locale that allows providing custom translations for Uploadcare components or using predefined CDN URLs for other languages, enabling full localization beyond the default English version.

• utils: Exposed a utility function getConstrainedViewportRect(), which returns the bounds of the visible viewport. Closes #19222.

• widget: The Esc key handling in widgets is registered in the editable element context. This allows easier customization of handlers for Esc keypress inside widgets and nested editable elements.

• Updated translations.