Developer advisory: Block Checkout field entities

In WooCommerce 9.6, we’re changing how checkout field visibility settings are saved so that they apply globally rather than to a specific checkout block instance.

The details

Field visibility settings within block checkout (phone, company, address 2) will be saved globally as entities (options). These entities will then be used across all checkouts (shortcodes and blocks), the My Account page, and the Store API.

For context, the field visibility settings have existed in WooCommerce core for some time and were used by the shortcode checkout. They could be customized in the site customizer, but not from blocks.

Because the field visibility entities used by block and shortcode checkouts have been unified, some migration needs to take place.

Migration works as follows:

• If you’ve used the site customizer to control field visibility in the past, block level visibility options will be discarded and the options from customizer will be used instead.
• If you’ve never used the customizer to control field visibility, and your primary checkout is the block based checkout, field visibility settings from the block based checkout will be migrated.
• Otherwise, defaults will be applied. The default will be dependent on whether you use the block based checkout on your main checkout page.
  • Block defaults are optional phone, optional address 2, and hidden company.
  • Shortcode defaults are required phone, optional address 2, and optional company.

How can I tell if this affects me?

If you know you’ve used the customizer in the past to edit shortcode checkout fields, you may be impacted if you were using different settings on the block based checkout.

You can check if you’re impacted by viewing the checkout page after upgrading to WooCommerce 9.6 and seeing which address fields are shown in the form.

What action should I take?

If the fields have changed, you need to:

1. Edit the page containing your Checkout Block
2. Click on the shipping address block to open the inspector
3. Change the Address Field Options. These toggles affect field visibility and whether they are required or optional.
4. Save changes