Editor toolbar

The toolbar is the most basic user interface element of the WYSIWYG editor that gives convenient access to all its features. It contains various items like buttons or dropdowns that you can use to format, manage, insert and alter elements of the content.

Toolbar configuration is a strict UI-related setting. Removing a toolbar item does not remove the feature from the editor internals. If your goal with the toolbar configuration is to remove features, the right solution is to also remove their respective plugins. Check removing features for more information.

In the builds that contain toolbars an optimal default configuration is defined for it. You may need a different toolbar arrangement, though, and this can be achieved through configuration.

Each editor may have a different toolbar configuration scheme, so it is recommended to check its documentation. In any case, the following example may give you a general idea:

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        toolbar: [ 'bold', 'italic', 'link', 'undo', 'redo', 'numberedList', 'bulletedList' ]
    } )
    .catch( error => {
        console.log( error );
    } );

# Demo

This is how a simplified toolbar from the snippet above looks in the CKEditor 5 WYSIWYG editor user interface. Toolbar items can be easily added or removed thanks to this configuration.

Rich Text Editor

The Red Planet is a target that has been aimed at for decades. Both Soviet (later Russian) and American designers looked at the sky and planned. Valeri Polyakov spent almost 438 days during a single long-term mission onboard the Mir space station to test the ability of humans to thrive in space for long periods of time. It was twenty years ago. The experiments he carried out, the research and all scientific data are still patiently waiting. They are evaluated, researched, re-read again and again, as people near the day they will launch a manned spacecraft toward Mars, the Moon, or the cislunar orbit.

You can use '|' to create a separator between groups of toolbar items. It works in both the basic and extended configuration formats:

Basic:

toolbar: [ 'bold', 'italic', '|', 'undo', 'redo', '|', 'numberedList', 'bulletedList' ]

Extended:

toolbar: {
    items: [ 'bold', 'italic', '|', 'undo', 'redo', '|', 'numberedList', 'bulletedList' ]
}

Below you can find an example of a simple toolbar with button grouping. The group separators ('|') set in the configuration help organize the toolbar.

You can use the extended toolbar configuration format to access additional options:

toolbar: {
    items: [ 'bold', 'italic', '|', 'undo', 'redo', '-', 'numberedList', 'bulletedList' ],
    shouldNotGroupWhenFull: true
}

items – An array of toolbar item names. Most of the components (buttons, dropdowns, etc.) which can be used as toolbar items are described under the Features tab. A full list is defined in editor.ui.componentFactory and can be listed using the following snippet: Array.from( editor.ui.componentFactory.names() ). Besides button names, you can also use the dedicated separators for toolbar groups ('|') and toolbar lines ('-').
removeItems – An array of toolbar item names. With this setting you can modify the default toolbar configuration without the need of defining the entire list (you can specify a couple of buttons that you want to remove instead of specifying all the buttons you want to keep). If, after removing an item, toolbar will have two or more consecutive separators ('|'), the duplicates will be removed automatically.
shouldNotGroupWhenFull – When set to true, the toolbar will stop grouping items and let them wrap to the next line when there is not enough space to display them in a single row. This setting is false by default, which enables items grouping.

The demo below presents the “regular” toolbar look with shouldNotGroupWhenFull set to false. If there are excess toolbar items for the display width, the toolbar gets grouped and some of the items are accessible via the clickable “Show more items” (⋮) button.

To save space in your toolbar or arrange the features thematically, you can group several items into a dropdown. For instance, check out the following configuration:

toolbar: [
            {
                label: 'More basic styles',
                icon: 'threeVerticalDots',
                items: [ 'strikethrough', 'superscript', 'subscript' ]
            },
// More of toolbar's config.
// ...
]

It will create a “Basic styles” dropdown with a “three vertical dots” icon containing the additional basic text styles buttons set. You can test it in the demo below along with a few more toolbar dropdowns.

# Customization

You can customize the look of the dropdown by configuring additional properties, such as the icon, label or tooltip text.

# Displaying the label

You can control the way the UI element is displayed. For instance, to hide the icon and to display the label only, you can use the following configuration:

{
    label: 'Basic styles',
    // Show the textual label of the dropdown.
    // Note that the "icon" property is not configured and defaults to three dots.
    withText: true,
    items: [ 'bold', 'italic', 'strikethrough', 'superscript', 'subscript' ]
}

Note: The label will also automatically show up if the icon is false (learn more).

# Changing the icon

You can use one of the icons listed below for your dropdown:

Icon name	Preview
`'threeVerticalDots'` (default)
`'alignLeft'`
`'bold'`
`'importExport'`
`'paragraph'`
`'text'`
`'plus'`

The default icons are loaded from the ckeditor5-core package.
If no icon is specified, 'threeVerticalDots' will be used as a default.
If icon: false is configured, no icon will be displayed and the text label will show up instead.
You can set a custom icon for the drop-down by passing an SVG string.

Here is an example:

toolbar: [
    {
        // This drop-down uses a default icon because none was specified.
        label: 'Fonts',
        items: [ 'fontSize', 'fontFamily', 'fontColor', 'fontBackgroundColor' ]
    },
    {
                // This drop-down has the icon disabled and a text label instead.
        label: 'Lists',
        icon: false,
        items: [ 'bulletedList', 'numberedList', 'todoList' ]
    },
    {
        // A "plus" sign icon works best for content insertion tools.
        label: 'Insert',
        icon: 'plus',
        items: [ 'uploadImage', 'insertTable' ]
    },
    {
        label: 'A drop-down with a custom icon',
        // If you want your icon to change the color dynamically (e.g. when opened)
        // avoid fill="..." and stroke="..." styling attributes.
        // Use solid shapes and avoid paths with strokes.
        icon: '<svg viewBox="0 0 68 64" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"><path d="M43.71 11.025a11.508 11.508 0 0 0-1.213 5.159c0 6.42 5.244 11.625 11.713 11.625.083 0 .167 0 .25-.002v16.282a5.464 5.464 0 0 1-2.756 4.739L30.986 60.7a5.548 5.548 0 0 1-5.512 0L4.756 48.828A5.464 5.464 0 0 1 2 44.089V20.344c0-1.955 1.05-3.76 2.756-4.738L25.474 3.733a5.548 5.548 0 0 1 5.512 0l12.724 7.292z" fill="#FFF"/><path d="M45.684 8.79a12.604 12.604 0 0 0-1.329 5.65c0 7.032 5.744 12.733 12.829 12.733.091 0 .183-.001.274-.003v17.834a5.987 5.987 0 0 1-3.019 5.19L31.747 63.196a6.076 6.076 0 0 1-6.037 0L3.02 50.193A5.984 5.984 0 0 1 0 45.003V18.997c0-2.14 1.15-4.119 3.019-5.19L25.71.804a6.076 6.076 0 0 1 6.037 0L45.684 8.79zm-29.44 11.89c-.834 0-1.51.671-1.51 1.498v.715c0 .828.676 1.498 1.51 1.498h25.489c.833 0 1.51-.67 1.51-1.498v-.715c0-.827-.677-1.498-1.51-1.498h-25.49.001zm0 9.227c-.834 0-1.51.671-1.51 1.498v.715c0 .828.676 1.498 1.51 1.498h18.479c.833 0 1.509-.67 1.509-1.498v-.715c0-.827-.676-1.498-1.51-1.498H16.244zm0 9.227c-.834 0-1.51.671-1.51 1.498v.715c0 .828.676 1.498 1.51 1.498h25.489c.833 0 1.51-.67 1.51-1.498v-.715c0-.827-.677-1.498-1.51-1.498h-25.49.001zm41.191-14.459c-5.835 0-10.565-4.695-10.565-10.486 0-5.792 4.73-10.487 10.565-10.487C63.27 3.703 68 8.398 68 14.19c0 5.791-4.73 10.486-10.565 10.486v-.001z" fill="#1EBC61" fill-rule="nonzero"/><path d="M60.857 15.995c0-.467-.084-.875-.251-1.225a2.547 2.547 0 0 0-.686-.88 2.888 2.888 0 0 0-1.026-.531 4.418 4.418 0 0 0-1.259-.175c-.134 0-.283.006-.447.018-.15.01-.3.034-.446.07l.075-1.4h3.587v-1.8h-5.462l-.214 5.06c.319-.116.682-.21 1.089-.28.406-.071.77-.107 1.088-.107.218 0 .437.021.655.063.218.041.413.114.585.218s.313.244.422.419c.109.175.163.391.163.65 0 .424-.132.745-.396.961a1.434 1.434 0 0 1-.938.325c-.352 0-.656-.1-.912-.3-.256-.2-.43-.453-.523-.762l-1.925.588c.1.35.258.664.472.943.214.279.47.514.767.706.298.191.63.339.995.443.365.104.749.156 1.151.156.437 0 .86-.064 1.272-.193.41-.13.778-.323 1.1-.581a2.8 2.8 0 0 0 .775-.981c.193-.396.29-.864.29-1.405h-.001z" fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero"/></g></svg>',
        items: [ 'bold', 'italic' ]
    },
    '|',
    'undo', 'redo'
]

And here is the effect:

Rich Text Editor

Mars Pathfinder was very special. It deployed the first rover to ever operate on another planet (while astrounauts did rove the Moon extensively, it is just a satellite). Pathfinder took off on martian soil on 4 December 1996 and roamed the red martial hills and plains for 84 days before it finally succumbed to the harsh extraterrestrial conditions.

By default, the tooltip of the button shares its text with the label. You can customize it to better describe your dropdown and make it more accessible by using the tooltip property (learn more):

toolbar: [
    {
        label: 'Others',
        tooltip: 'Basic formatting features',
        items: [ 'bold', 'italic' ]
    },
    '|',
    'undo', 'redo'
]

Rich Text Editor

The Mars 2020 mission was, again, very special for robots visiting the Red Planet. It carried the very first martial helicopter that landed on the surface and took off into thin martian air on 19 April 2021. There are also other operational robots on Mars, both from the USA and China, roaming around and waiting for humans to finally arrive.

In the extended toolbar configuration format it is also possible to arrange toolbar items into multiple lines. Here is how to achieve this:

Set the shouldNotGroupWhenFull option to true, so items will not be grouped when the toolbar overflows but will wrap to the new line instead.
Additionally, the '-' separator can be used inside the items list to set the breaking point explicitly.

toolbar: {
    [ 'bold', 'italic', '|', 'undo', 'redo', '-', 'numberedList', 'bulletedList' ],
    shouldNotGroupWhenFull: true
}

When shouldNotGroupWhenFull is set to true, by default the toolbar items are automatically wrapped into a new line once they do not fit the editor width. The mechanism is automatic and only wraps excess items. Notice that while the toolbar group separators '|' are preserved, the groups may be split when they overflow.

toolbar: {
    items: [
        'heading', '|',
        'fontfamily', 'fontsize', '|',
        'alignment', '|',
        'fontColor', 'fontBackgroundColor', '|',
        'bold', 'italic', 'strikethrough', 'underline', 'subscript', 'superscript', '|',
        'link', '|',
        'outdent', 'indent', '|',
        'bulletedList', 'numberedList', 'todoList', '|',
        'code', 'codeBlock', '|',
        'insertTable', '|',
        'uploadImage', 'blockQuote', '|',
        'undo', 'redo'
    ],
    shouldNotGroupWhenFull: true
}

See how it works in practice. You may play with the browser window width to see how the buttons behave when the toolbar gets wrapped into multiple lines.

Rich Text Editor

The space stations

The Soviet Salyut space station line was, in fact, two different programs. One was a military Almaz programme with OPS station design, and the other was civilian Salyut with their DOS design. The DOS was, in fact, the hull of an OPS outfitted with additional hardware. The original OPS was designed in the mid-1960’s by the OKB-52 secret facility lead by Chelomei. As they struggled with funding and fell behind schedule, the original design was “borrowed” by engineers from OKB-1, lead by Korolev.

His people used Chelomei’s main hull and outfitted it with the engines, solar panels, and docking and transfer systems from their own space craft, Soyuz (which was, primarily, developed to fly to the Moon; once it never did, it flew to low Earth orbit in 1967 and still does so, ferrying astronauts and cosmonauts to the ISS in 2021!). Korolev’s people used somebody else’s experience, but did their own work, and in 1971 for the first time in history they put a space base in orbit. And manned it. And it was a success.

# Explicit wrapping breakpoint

Setting an explicit break point in the toolbar configuration with '-' lets you create your own predefined multiline toolbar configuration. Toolbar items will then be grouped and put in lines as declared in the configuration.

toolbar: {
    items: [
        'heading', '|',
        'alignment', '|',
        'bold', 'italic', 'strikethrough', 'underline', 'subscript', 'superscript', '|',
        'link', '|',
        'bulletedList', 'numberedList', 'todoList',
        '-', // break point
        'fontfamily', 'fontsize', 'fontColor', 'fontBackgroundColor', '|',
        'code', 'codeBlock', '|',
        'insertTable', '|',
        'outdent', 'indent', '|',
        'uploadImage', 'blockQuote', '|',
        'undo', 'redo'
    ],
    shouldNotGroupWhenFull: true
}

Rich Text Editor

The nice Canadian

Remember Chris Hadfield? Of course, everyone has seen “Space Oddity” played and sung onboard the ISS. But have you seen the videos he recorded for schools? Short pieces on living in space, brushing your teeth in space, and sleeping in zero gravity? Kids love them. Teachers love them. Schools use them. This is a gift, a thank you gesture, a hand extended back. This humble man made his dream come true, he flew to the stars. But not even once did he forget the people that put him there – the engineers, designers, scientists. Those before him that went into space and those who gave their life to make this dream possible.

Now he helps bring up a new generation that will build better, safer, faster spaceships. That will once more reach the surface of the Moon, will leave the Earth orbit and fly to Mars, to Venus. Those are years to come and the goals will take a lot of patience. But what he does is gold. He is honest, humble, and true in what he did up there and the generation that came can see that, share in his activities and grab that passion.

# Listing available items

You can use the following snippet to retrieve all toolbar items available in your editor:

Array.from( editor.ui.componentFactory.names() );

# Adding a custom button

Refer to the Creating a simple plugin guide to learn how to build your own plugin, register its button and add it to the toolbar configuration.

The BlockToolbar feature provides an additional configurable toolbar on the left-hand side of the content area, useful when the main toolbar is not accessible (e.g. in certain balloon block editor scenarios).

Every day, we work hard to keep our documentation complete. Have you spotted outdated information? Is something missing? Please report it via our issue tracker.

Editor toolbar

# Basic toolbar configuration

# Demo

# Separating toolbar items

# Extended toolbar configuration format

The space race

# Grouping toolbar items in drop-downs (nested toolbars)

# Customization

# Displaying the label

# Changing the icon

# Customizing the tooltip

# Multiline (wrapping) toolbar

# Automatic toolbar wrapping

The space stations

The space stations

# Explicit wrapping breakpoint

The nice Canadian

The nice Canadian

# Listing available items

# Adding a custom button

# Block toolbar