Enhancement: Add icons to block options menu items for improved UX and visual clarity #78050
Description
What problem does this address?
The block options menu currently displays actions such as Copy, Cut, Duplicate, Add before/after, and Delete as text-only menu items.
This makes the menu more difficult to quickly scan and visually distinguish, especially for users who frequently interact with block controls or are new to the editor. Since many parts of the editor already use icons alongside labels, the current menu feels visually inconsistent and less intuitive.
Additionally, actions with different purposes (destructive, structural, utility actions) are not visually differentiated, which may increase cognitive load while editing.
What is your proposed solution?
Add relevant icons alongside each action in the block options dropdown menu.
For example:
- Copy → copy icon
- Cut → cut icon
- Duplicate → duplicate icon
- Add before/after → plus/insert icons
- Delete → trash icon
This would improve:
- Visual scannability
- Action recognition speed
- Overall editor usability and accessibility
- Consistency with existing Gutenberg UI patterns
The enhancement would provide a more intuitive user experience without changing the existing functionality of the menu.
Activity
adithya-naik commentedon May 7, 2026
hanneslsm commentedon May 7, 2026
Before we start adding icons to every action, I recommend this interesting read (some parts are very MacOS Tahoe specific, but still): https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/
adithya-naik commentedon May 7, 2026
Thanks @hanneslsm for sharing this article — it raises some valid UX concerns around adding icons universally to all menu actions.
I agree that adding icons everywhere without clear differentiation can increase visual clutter and reduce scan efficiency.
My intention here was mainly around improving recognition for some of the most frequently used or high-impact actions (for example destructive or structural actions), rather than necessarily iconifying every menu item.
It may also be worth exploring whether selective icon usage could improve usability while avoiding the consistency and clutter issues highlighted in the article.
adithya-naik commentedon May 7, 2026
Instead of this, I Feel this is good:
Mamaduka commentedon May 7, 2026
I think this has been discussed before. I would recommend searching the old issues. I don't exactly recall the decision, but since there are no icons, it probably was marked as "won't fix" or "not planned".
Maybe @jameskoster or @richtabor remember more details.
t-hamano commentedon May 8, 2026
It seems the icons were removed as part of a visual design overhaul. See https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/19344/changes#diff-1eb2db12c6b7b9ecd47f0ce0bafa5f2f1001a63e8d00a14ab141db2bf26d41b6L17-L23.
The reason is mentioned here.
I propose marking this issue as "not planned".
adithya-naik commentedon May 8, 2026
Thanks for the context(discussed years back, 2019) @t-hamano , You can mark this unplanned and, will reopen if needed in future(if any UX patterns evolve). This issue was raised just to align with the advancements in the UI elements everywhee.
Mamaduka commentedon May 8, 2026
Closing as "not planned".