The toolbar has grown a lot over the years, and not everyone uses all of it. If you write in Markdown by hand, or you never touch the text-size menu, a user can now just turn those off for themselves.
How to try it
- Go to Admin → Upcoming Changes at
/admin/config/upcoming-changes - Find Composer toolbar customization and enable it
- Then, as any member: Preferences → Interface → Composer toolbar
- Untick anything you don’t want and save
You can turn it off again at any time from the same place.
What you can hide
Bold, italic, text sizes, link, blockquote, code, lists, emoji, GIF, post language, and toggle direction.
Some of these only appear if the matching site setting is on — GIFs, emoji, text direction and post language will only be listed if your site has them enabled.
What you can’t hide
The upload button and the + menu always stay. The + menu is how plugins like polls, dates, details and math add their features to the composer, so hiding it would cut off access to those entirely.
Buttons added by plugins also stay put. If your admin has enabled something that adds to the composer, the reasoning is that it’s there on purpose.
Worth knowing
Keyboard shortcuts keep working. Hiding the bold button doesn’t disable Ctrl+B. This is deliberate — for a lot of people the button is the thing they don’t need, not the shortcut.
It’s per account, not per device. Your choices follow you between desktop and mobile rather than being set separately on each.
Composer needs reopening. If you change the setting while a composer is already open, reopen it to see the change.
What’s not in this version
- No reordering. You can hide buttons, not rearrange them.
- Items in the
+menu can’t be hidden. - No moving items between bar and
+menu
All of the above are great ideas (and may be(come) popular requests), but add complexity.