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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.

# CKEditor 5 45.0.0 release

The CKEditor 5 v45.0.0 release brings powerful new features and improvements, making content creation smoother and more versatile. From enhanced email editing to a refined linking experience and a brand-new full-screen mode, this update is packed with valuable upgrades.

# Release highlights

# Email editing enhancements

We are making it easier to create and edit emails directly in CKEditor 5 with several enhancements. This release introduces the following new features:

  • Export with Inline Styles (⭐) provides the ability to export email content with automatically inlined styles, ensuring compatibility and proper rendering across different email clients.
  • Email Configuration Helper (⭐) is a new configuration helper plugin that provides guidance for integrators to correctly set up an email-friendly editor while avoiding common pitfalls.
  • Layout tables: are a new type of tables that has been introduced to simplify the creation of structured email designs, offering better control over layout, alignment and spacing.

Apart from these new features, this update also brings various fixes and improvements related to table behavior, enhanced HTML support, and better handling of complex email structures. These refinements help ensure a more seamless email editing experience, reducing inconsistencies and improving compatibility with external email clients.

# The fullscreen feature

A long-requested feature has finally arrived with the introduction of full-screen editing for the classic and decoupled editor types. This new mode provides a focused writing experience by making the editor the centerpiece of the screen. The expanded screen space allows for better visibility of content in sidebars such as comments, suggestions, and document outlines, enhancing your overall workflow.

# Improved linking experience

Linking in CKEditor 5 has been significantly upgraded with a redesigned user interface, making adding and editing links more intuitive. Users can now easily link to bookmarks within the document and select links from predefined lists (defined by the developer). These improvements make inserting and managing links faster and more flexible than ever before.

During this initiative, we also aligned visual and technical components of the editor. Each balloon got a header with the tile, we also unified the toolbar behavior and keystrokes of Link and Bookmarks with other widget’s toolbars like image and tables.

[!NOTE]
The UI got updated in several places: main view, link properties (decorators), and also its technical implementation changed. Make sure to give special attention to the update if you did any customizations to the link interface.

# New installation methods improvements: icons replacement

We are continuing to strengthen the new installation methods while phasing out older solutions. We added one of the key components you asked for: replacing our icons with your custom ones. It is now possible to replace the icons via the package’s override mechanism.

[!NOTE]
To achieve a proper solution for icons replacement for the npm builds, we needed to introduce a breaking change. If you used our icons for any purposes, make sure to update their paths.

# ⚠️ Deprecations in old installation methods: stage 1 completed

We are progressing with deprecation according to our sunset plan. From this release, predefined builds’ packages, such as @ckeditor/ckeditor-build-classic, are now officially deprecated.

We also dropped support for Webpack 4 in both the old and new installation methods. All packages and CDN from this version are now distributed with ES2022 as the target ECMAScript version, providing better compatibility with modern JavaScript features and improved performance.

By the end of 2025, custom builds that rely on webpack and DLL builds will also be deprecated. Refer to our documentation and migration guides to ensure a smooth transition.

We are committed to making CKEditor 5 even better. Stay tuned for more improvements in upcoming releases! If you have any feedback, let us know — we are always listening.

Please refer to the update guide to learn more about these changes.

Happy editing!

# MAJOR BREAKING CHANGES

  • bookmark: The BookmarkUI#actionsView is no longer available. The bookmark feature is now using the WidgetToolbarRepository instead.
  • build-*: CKEditor 5 predefined builds are no longer available.
  • link: The LinkUI#actionsView is no longer available. The bookmark feature now uses the LinkUI#toolbarView (an instance of the ToolbarView class) instead of the custom LinkActionsView.

# MINOR BREAKING CHANGES

  • link: The createBookmarkCallbacks() helper is now replaced by the isScrollableToTarget() and scrollToTarget() helpers.
  • table: The FormRowView class was moved to the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-ui package.
  • table: The form.css component was moved to the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-theme-lark package.
  • All CKEditor 5 icons are now available in the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-icons package.

# DISTRIBUTION CHANGES

  • All packages and CDN source code now target ES2022 as the ECMAScript version.

# Features

  • email: Introduced a new package to validate the editor configuration for email compatibility. It helps prevent misconfigurations by enforcing best practices and future-proof rules. Added utilities for post-processing CSS, improving support across various email clients by adjusting styles for better rendering consistency.
  • export-inline-styles: Added a new package for exporting content with inline styles. Ensures CSS classes ([class]) and IDs ([id]) are inlined within elements, improving compatibility with email clients that strip external styles. It helps maintain consistent formatting across different email clients, reducing rendering issues.
  • fullscreen: Introduced the fullscreen mode feature. Closes #18026. (commit)
  • html-support: Introduced the ability to render the<style> elements from the <head> section of editor data content using the FullPage plugin. See #13482. (commit)
  • revision-history: Added a new property RevisionHistory#isRevisionViewerOpen that indicates whether the revision history is opened or not.
  • source-editing-enhanced: The one-dark theme is now built-in and available via config.sourceEditingEnhanced.theme by passing the 'dark' value. This change enables the use of the dark theme with the CDN installation method, which does not support external CodeMirror dependencies. Additionally, if you previously used the oneDark extension directly, you can now switch to theme: 'dark' for built-in support.
  • table: Introduced the layout tables feature to enable constructing grids with tables, for example for email editing. These tables are designed for layout purposes, and include the role="presentation" parameter for accessibility. Users can insert layout tables via the editor toolbar and switch between content and layout tables. The editing view now closely matches the rendered output. Closes #18132. (commit)
  • table: Added the ability to toggle between content tables and layout tables. Users can switch table types using a split button in the table properties UI. While captions and <th> elements may be lost, table structure remains intact. Closes #18131. (commit)
  • table: Dragging and dropping a table into another table no longer merges them. Instead, the dropped table is placed as a whole inside the target cell. Pasting tables remains unchanged. Closes #18126. (commit)
  • template: Inserting a template containing a table into another table no longer merges them. Instead, the template is placed as a whole inside the target cell. See #18126.
  • theme-lark: Introduced the form.css component . (commit)
  • ui: Added the MenuBarView#disable() and MenuBarView#enable() methods. They disable/enable all top-level menus in menu bar. Closes #17940. (commit)
  • ui: Added the ToolbarView#switchBehavior() method to switch toolbar behavior after the editor has been initialized. Closes #18159. (commit)
  • ui: Introduced the FormRowView class. (commit)
  • Moved all icons to the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-icons package. Related to #16546. (commit)
  • Added the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-icons package to the core DLL package. (commit)

# Bug fixes

  • ckbox: Resolved an issue where images from private categories were not appearing in the selector. Closes #18044. (commit)
  • emoji: Fixed the emoji panel not being visible while used in comments archive. Closes #17964. (commit)
  • engine: The selection should not move to another table row while switching heading rows. Closes #17962. (commit)
  • heading: Added the missing converterPriority type definition to HeadingOption interface. Closes #18182. (commit)
  • html-support: The floated tables are now loaded and showed as expected in the editor’s view. Closes #18203. (commit)
  • link: The Autolink feature will now correctly autolink http://localhost and http://localhost:port. Closes #18185. (commit)
  • mention: Fixed the mention panel not being visible while used in comments archive. Closes #17964. (commit)
  • revision-history: Revisions will now correctly retain data for HTML embed widget, as well as <script> and <style> tags enabled by the General HTML Support feature. Before, when revision was saved, these elements were saved empty, and this lead to data loss when such revision was restored. Note, that this will not fix revisions that are already affected by this error.
  • revision-history: Fixed a crash when viewing a revision which had an HTML comment node in its data (reproducible with General HTML Support plugin).
  • revision-history: Fixed handling UIElements and RawElements by revision history (may concern third-party custom plugins).
  • revision-history: Fixed a crash when viewing a revision which had a collapsed marker in its data (may concern third-party custom plugins).
  • table: Removed [role="textbox"] from the <td>/` editables. Windows Narrator no longer reads table dimensions as 0 by 0. Closes #16923. (commit)
  • track-changes: The editor no longer crashes during initialization when the ShiftEnter plugin is removed.
  • ui: Do not open disabled menu bar menu items on arrow down press. Closes #17915. (commit)
  • ui: The ButtonView#icon property can now be set/reset after the button’s first render. (commit)
  • table: Widgets UI elements should be visible when they are inside tables. Closes #18268.
  • table: Nested tables outline should not be cut of at the bottom during hovering. Closes #18262.
  • link: Link balloon no longer disappears when scrolling the page slightly on iOS. Closes #18022.

# Other changes

  • bookmark: The Bookmark feature now uses the WidgetToolbarRepository instead of a custom ActionsView to display the bookmark toolbar in the contextual balloon. The new toolbar uses components registered in the ComponentFactory. (commit)
  • bookmark: Form styles and structure are now unified with use of ck-form and ck-form__row. (commit)
  • collaboration-core: Translations are now supported in the date formatter used by comments and suggestions, allowing for localizing dates.
  • engine: Added the read-only DomConverter#domDocument property. Closes #18146. (commit)
  • image: Image and custom resize form styles and structure now unified with use of ck-form and ck-form__row. (commit)
  • link: The link feature now uses the ToolbarView instead of a custom LinkActionsView to display the link toolbar in the contextual balloon. The new toolbar uses components registered in the ComponentFactory. (commit)
  • link: Form styles and structure are now unified with use of ck-form and ck-form__row. (commit)
  • real-time-collaboration: Added a more modern look to the presence list collapsed view (used when many users are connected to the document).
  • revision-history: The document outline will now be hidden when the revision history is opened.
  • source-editing: Document outline and annotations will now be hidden when editor is in source editing mode. Closes #17978. (commit)
  • table: Extracted the form.css to @ckeditor/ckeditor5-theme-lark package. (commit)
  • table: Extracted the FormRowView to @ckeditor/ckeditor5-ui package. (commit)
  • ui: The IconView now throws a meaningful error if the provided icon content is not a valid SVG. (commit)
  • widget: The WidgetToolbarRepository#register() now accepts a customized list of desired balloon positions. (commit)
  • Added the Belarusian language translations for CKEditor 5. Huge thanks to @karavanjo. (commit)
  • Upgraded the minimal version of Node.js to 20.0.0 due to the end of LTS. (commit)
  • Updated TypeScript target to es2022. Closes #17886. (commit)
  • Replaced lodash-es with es-toolkit. See #16395. (commit)
  • The @ckeditor/ckeditor5-build-* packages are no longer maintained. (commit)

# CKEditor 5 44.3.0 release

We are happy to announce the release of CKEditor 5 v44.3.0.

# Release Highlights

This release brings a couple of minor improvements and bug fixes:

  • Link Decorators: We fixed the behavior of the multiple manual link decorators that set the rel attribute. The fix happened so deep in the engine that we improved the overall performance of the editor slightly as well.
  • Added a new EmptyBlock plugin: From now on, new plugin prevents adding &nbsp; to the output data of blocks, works similarly to the fillEmptyBlocks configuration in CKEditor 4.
  • Support for the <hr> element in the General HTML Support plugin enhanced: attributes of the <hr> element are now properly preserved if configuration allows it.
  • Emoji: We enhanced emoji support for better compatibility with users’ older devices.

For more details, see the changelog below.

# MINOR BREAKING CHANGES

  • engine: The ViewConsumable.consumablesFromElement() is removed and replaced with the view.Element#_getConsumables() internal method. You should use ViewConsumable.createFrom() to create consumables if needed.
  • engine: The ViewElementConsumables now accepts and outputs only normalized data. The ViewConsumable still accepts normalized or non-normalized input.
  • engine: The Matcher#match() and Matcher#matchAll() output is now normalized. The MatchResult#match now contains normalized data compatible with changes in the ViewConsumable.

# Features

# Bug fixes

  • collaboration-core: User initials will now be generated based on the words that start with letters, ensuring that only valid alphabetic characters are used in the initials.
  • comments: Annotations will no longer be lost during real-time collaboration when a user removes and immediately reverts (undo) content containing comment markers.
  • comments: The editor will no longer crash when one user removes content containing a comment that another user is editing.
  • engine: The link [rel] attribute will now allow mixing manual link decorators for the same attribute, as it will be now handled as a token list. Closes #13985, Closes #6436. (commit)
  • mention: Mention should not be wrapped with an additional <span> when GHS is enabled. Closes #15329. (commit)
  • ui: Fixed an issue where the first selected color was applied instead of the second selected color when using the font color picker for the first time after loading the page. Closes #17069. (commit)
  • typing: Removing a nested editable does not remove an entire widget when the selection is placed at the beginning of that element. (commit)

# Other changes

  • clipboard: Export the viewToPlainText() function. Closes #17950. (commit)
  • collaboration-core: Introduced a new configuration option: config.users.getInitialsCallback. It allows providing a custom callback function for user initials generation.
  • emoji: Improved emoji support by expanding the range of versions compatible with users’ devices. Closes #18014. (commit)
  • emoji: Icons representing categories in the grid come from the same Unicode version to avoid rendering the non-supported ones. (commit)
  • emoji: Introduced the emoji.useCustomFont option to disable the filtering mechanism. Closes #18029. (commit)
  • engine: The whitespaces around a block filler (&nbsp;) are ignored while loading editor data. (commit)

# CKEditor 5 44.2.1 release

We are happy to announce the release of CKEditor 5 v44.2.1.

During a recent internal audit, we identified a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the CKEditor 5 real-time collaboration package (CVE-2025-25299). This vulnerability can lead to unauthorized JavaScript code execution and affects user markers, which represent users’ positions within the document.

This vulnerability affects only installations with real-time collaborative editing enabled.

You can read more details in the relevant security advisory and contact us if you have more questions.

# Bug fixes

  • comments: Fixed a few scenarios for which creating a new comment thread was impossible (for example, when a selection was made on multiple table cells). This was a regression introduced in v44.2.0.

# Other changes