WooCommerce 9.6: Pre-release updates

Our Beta for WooCommerce 9.6 is ready, and we want to share a sneak peek of what’s in store.

Check back here for more updates ahead of the WooCommerce 9.6 release, scheduled for January 20, 2025. 

What’s coming in 9.6

🎨 Refreshed the product editor: We’ve updated the design of the classic product and coupon editors with modernized UI updates using CSS-only changes. As part of this effort, the duplicate header and “Add new _” button were removed in a separate update to allow for a dedicated review and testing process. This approach ensures minimal disruption to merchants accustomed to the previous workflow and maintains compatibility with third-party extensions that interact with the editor header.

💳 Modernized Payments Settings Interface (Beta): WooCommerce 9.6 introduces the first phase of our recently announced payments modernization initiative. You can preview the new React-based payments settings interface by enabling the reactify-classic-payments-settings feature flag in the WooCommerce Beta Tester plugin. While no immediate action is required from payment gateway developers, we encourage you to test and share your feedback on GitHub.

🔌 Store API upgrades: We’ve added… a configurable rate-limiting system for the Store API and Checkout block to protect against card testing and denial-of-service attacks. Merchants can enable it via WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features, limiting customers to 3 “place order” requests per 60 seconds. Proxy mode is available for sites behind proxies or firewalls.

🐛 Remote Logging UI: We’re making it easier for users to manager their privacy by adding a UI control to manage the Remote Logging feature independently of usage tracking settings. This can be configured under WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features.

⚖️ Improved measurement unit handling: We now match measuring units to store location during onboarding, with U.S. stores defaulting to imperial units (lbs and inches). Units now automatically update when changing store location, while preserving existing settings during updates. Merchants can customize units under WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Measurements, and developers can reference updated locale data in ./i18n/locale-info.php for accurate country-specific unit adjustments.

🎁 Product Summary block additions: This block now supports text styling, truncation control, and a “Read More” link. It’s compatible across various contexts, including All Products and Single Product templates, and supports languages with different word definitions, along with many more improvements. Existing blocks won’t upgrade automatically, but an upgrade path is available through Inspector Controls.

📦 REST API product enhancements: We’ve enhanced the WooCommerce REST API /products endpoint with new filtering parameters for more precise product queries that provide developers with greater control over product data retrieval.

• Product Type: Use include_types and exclude_types to filter by specific product types.
• Product Status: Use include_status and exclude_status to filter by product status.
• Product Features: Filter by virtual or downloadable attributes.

Experimental changes

📩 Email Improvements: In 9.6 we are introducing two improvements to core WooCommerce emails under the Email Improvements experimental feature (WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Features). Emails can now inherit theme.json styles and display the logo in settings instead of the URL. Enabling this experimental feature will also allow users to view email style changes in real-time before saving settings. We expect to role out the final version in early 2025.

API Changes

• Add: include_types param to the /products endpoint #52994
• Add: virtual param to the /products endpoint #53002
• Add: exclude_types param to the /products endpoint #53184
• Add: future as accepted value on status params #53690

Other important information

Developer advisories

Update timeline