Joe Fusco 5:11 pm on October 2, 2026
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Presence API: What’s new

An update on the Presence API feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins, announced in April. Here’s everything that’s shipped since then.

Current version: 0.14.0. Requires WordPress 7.0 and PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher 7.4.

The Posts screen, where four locked posts show a lock icon and a note naming who is editing, such as "Quinn Roberts is currently editing". An Editors column on the right shows the faces of everyone in each post.
Post locks live in the presence table, so refreshing one no longer bumps the posts cache key.

In this post

What’s new since April

  • Every avatarAvatar An avatar is an image or illustration that specifically refers to a character that represents an online user. It’s usually a square box that appears next to the user’s name. now requests the right resolution for retina screens (#481).
  • The “someone else updated this” banner shows up again correctly if you dismiss it and someone edits again (#371).
  • Keyboard users can reach every item in the adminadmin (and super admin) bar menu, and focus stays put when the dashboard widgets refresh (#271, #275, #390).
  • One tab now polls and shares results with the rest, background tabs stop sending presence, and idle screens back off automatically (#300, #307, #675).
  • The Editors column and the Online users list refresh on each heartbeat (#604, #606).
  • Site Health tells you when Heartbeat can’t keep presence current (#544).

Recording and privacy

Recording is on by default. Switch it off for one site on Settings > General, or for every site at once on Networknetwork (versus site, blog) Admin > Settings. If either switch is off, recording is off, and post locks keep working either way (#429, #442). A privacy policy section, exporter and eraser cover presence data too (#449).

Settings > General with a checked "Record who is working where in the admin" checkbox under Presence.
Each site has its own switch.
Network Admin Settings with a checked "Record presence on sites in this network" checkbox under Presence, noting that switching it off stops recording everywhere, whatever an individual site has chosen.
The network switch overrides every site’s own setting when it’s off.

From WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/, run wp presence recording set off, or add --network for the whole network.

Multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site

Network Admin now shows who’s online across every site, with matching REST and WP-CLI. It’s on by default for networks below wp_is_large_network(), and the wp_presence_network_aggregation_enabled filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. turns it on or off (#332, #365).

Network Admin Users screen filtered to Online, with an Online column listing the sites each user is active on.
Each site writes a summary row, so Network Admin reads one table instead of every site’s.

Post locks

Post locks now live in the presence table instead of post metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress., so refreshing a lock no longer invalidates every cached post query on sites with a persistent object cache (#551). Locks keep working with recording switched off (#644).

Every post type

Presence works on every post type with an editor, including what the Site Editor has open (#631, #638). Roles that can edit only pages or a custom post typeCustom Post Type WordPress can hold and display many different types of content. A single item of such a content is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. Custom Post Types gives your site the ability to have templated posts, to simplify the concept. get presence too (#637).

Who sees what

Everyone online still appears in the admin bar, but where they are is now behind the view_presence_location capabilitycapability A capability is permission to perform one or more types of task. Checking if a user has a capability is performed by the current_user_can function. Each user of a WordPress site might have some permissions but not others, depending on their role. For example, users who have the Author role usually have permission to edit their own posts (the “edit_posts” capability), but not permission to edit other users’ posts (the “edit_others_posts” capability)., which maps to list_users by default (#571). Everyone can always see their own. The admin bar shows whole faces beside My Account (#565, #574). A face is ringed in the person’s blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor color only when you’re both in the same post, the way the editor shows it, and in your admin color scheme everywhere else (#707).

The admin bar's Presence menu, opened from three faces and "16 online", on the Posts screen. Blake Wilson, Cameron Lee and Harper Carter are listed first because they're on the same screen. Below them, everyone else online is grouped under the post or screen they're on, such as Casey Lewis, Morgan Scott and Riley Nelson under "Investigation: Where the Road Repair Money Went".
With it, administrators see where each person is.
The same Presence menu, seen by Dakota Ramirez, who can't see where other people are. admin, Blake Wilson, Cameron Lee and Harper Carter are listed first because they share the screen, and everyone else online appears as a plain list of names.
Without it, editors see who is online but not where.

AI agents

An AI agent editing over REST or MCP sends no Heartbeat, so it wouldn’t show up on its own. As of 0.13.0, each save writes a presence row for it in that post’s room, and the row expires about 75 seconds after its last save by default. The row appears in the admin bar and the Editors column with an Agent badge (#653, #697, #701).

The pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. doesn’t decide who is an agent. It asks the Agent Users plugin through wpai_is_agent_user() when that’s loaded, and any plugin can answer through the wp_presence_is_agent_user filter. With neither, nobody is labeled.

The Presence menu with Editorial Assistant, marked with an "Agent" badge, listed under "Weekend Arts Guide" next to Alex Smith.

Performance

In 0.12.2, each presence query is read once per request until the table changes, which took a Users screen heartbeat from 6 presence reads to 2 (#678). The plugin also stopped checking its tables on every admin page (#657, #682), and only one visible tab per site sends the Heartbeat pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” (#675).

For developers

  • As of 0.14.0, REST presence entries no longer include color, and wp_presence_get_user_color() returns the block editor’s color for a user ID instead of a stored one (#707).
  • New functions: wp_presence_exchange(), wp_presence_leave() and wp_presence_is_available(), documented in the PHP API section of the README (#546, #519).
  • Each row carries its own expiry, and reads filter by client ID prefix in SQL (#541, #530).
  • An admin bar debugger replaces the Dashboard widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user., and plugins can add their own rows to it (#652, #666). It’s a development tool: it loads only with WP_DEBUG on and isn’t in the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ download, so use a git checkout or the plugin’s Live Preview in Playground.
  • Writes work on SQLite (#623).
  • Gutenberg Sync Engines, a plugin for trying server-aware real-time collaboration, keeps who’s in the editor in the presence table when Presence APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. is active too. To see it, launch the RTC Playground, which opens a post shared with two seeded collaborators, and open the debugger: their rows start with gse-.
The Presence debugger opened from the admin bar on the Dashboard. It shows a 60-second interval and a 150-second TTL, then the admin/online room with 101 rows. admin, Kendall Wilson and Toby Martinez are listed first with blue dots, matching the faces of the people on the Dashboard in the admin bar.
101 people online, each row showing its client ID and seconds since last seen.

Feedback welcome

Discussion and development: #feature-presence-api on WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/

Bug reports and discussion: GitHub Issues

Thank you to @mindctrl, @iqbal1hossain, and @iamchitti for reviewing this post.

Props to @intenzi, @ashishjii, @iamchitti, @iqbal1hossain, @wp24horas, @aldorza, @bejignesh, @stfulldev, @obenland, @moriikuri, @ishitaj34, @theaminuldev, @muneebashraf, @mindctrl, @zahidui, @mitgiselle, @jaredrethman, @jooahmed and @westonruter for contributing.

#performance, #presence-api