Help Us Test the Composer Redesign

[chapoi]

Goals

We have been ramping up with small prep changes such as moving the preview toggle, integrating AI suggestions, adding GIFs int he toolbar, and are now ready to try the bigger change which is available to try as an experimental upcoming change.

Our main goals are:

1. Update the composer in line with our general changes to modernise our look and feel

2. Improve the mobile composing experience

We’d love your help testing it before it moves further along.

How to try it

1. Go to your Admin→ Upcoming Changes at /admin/config/upcoming-changes
2. Find Composer redesign and enable it
3. Open the composer (reply, new topic, or a new message) and take it for a spin on both desktop and mobile

You can turn it off again at any time from the same place. Here on Meta you can join the new test group composer-testers.

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We especially need feedback from anyone running theme components or plugins that customize the composer — this redesign changes the composer’s structure slightly, not just its styling. More on that below.

What’s changed

Layout & structure

General

• The title has been incorporated into the content, making it appear more like a document title (Notion users should find this familiar)
• Toolbar has been moved to the footer. This will take a little muscle-memory adjustment (it annoyed me too for the first few days )
• Reworked category and tag inputs (including a tag icon and minimal selection display)
• Less borders, more spacious feel

Markdown

• The title, category, and tags now sit in a full-width metadata area above the editor + preview pane, rather than restricted to the left column.

Mobile

A really big driving factor of this project is trying to improve the mobile experience. There have been an abundance of justified complaints regarding this on Meta over the years ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

To increase the available space while composing, we’re experimenting with an expanding editor, which slides up on focus, covering the composer fields, and stays expanded while the editor is focused. This is applicable when making a new topic or new PM, not when replying.

This more than doubles the available writing space, going from 103px to 212px (when testing on my device – actual results may vary).

Other

• The toolbar toggle is removed in the new layout
• Swipe down to dismiss the keyboard and collapse the editor back to normal
• Chosen tags are only visible when the menu is opened. The icon is coloured to indicate a selection has been made.

Feedback

This is still highly experimental and I’m mainly interested in finding out how it works on regular screen sizes (desktop & mobile) on Foundation. Tablets, folding phones, other themes, and so on have not been optimised yet.

Calling theme & plugin authors

If you connect to composer plugin outlets or style the composer, please test with the redesign enabled. The DOM has moved, and some customizations may need adjusting:

• The composer fields block now renders as a full-width child of the editor container, no longer inside the editor’s text column
• Content injected into the composer-fields outlet now appears above the title (between the category/tags group and the title), full-width
• The title field is rendered as its own row, separate from the category/tags cluster and below them instead of above

No outlets have been renamed or removed (although they may be later to semantically adjust to the changes) — your connectors will still attach. What’s changed is where and how wide your content renders.

If you spot something broken in your theme or plugin, please reply here with the component/plugin and a screenshot. That feedback is exactly what this testing phase is for.

Design

Here are some specific trade-offs or design decisions I’m on the fence about myself that could use some input. Everything else is welcome too of course.

A) Why is the title input so damn big?

So the idea is that it’s bumped up to a bigger size than a manually added H1 is, to ensure it’s always visually the title in the document. Sometimes I look at it and think “gross”, other times I’m like “yeah, this works”.

Another idea is to scale down the existing titles slightly, to achieve the same effect.

B) Are the hidden tags an issue…

…big enough to not be worth the trade-off on mobile (more space for the category).

If so, why?

C) How does the animation for the expanding editor work on your device?

Is it jank-town? Good enough? An improvement? Alternative ideas or tweaks to make it better?

D) What about the AI suggest-title-button?

I’m not overly fond myself of how it’s floating all by its lonesome there. How does it feel for others (that use it)? Very open to hear design ideas.

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Thanks for helping us get this right before it ships more widely.

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1. New Topic Editor Too Small iOS 26.5 Safari Web - #4 by fearlessfrog ↩︎

2. Creating/Editing a post on mobile: let's discuss the 2026 Discourse experience ↩︎

3. Such a tiny window to edit here on a cell phone ↩︎

[darkpixlz (Pyx)]

@chapoi

A) Why is the title input so damn big?

Yeah, truthfully I’m not too big on it being down near the text area and not a separate box at the moment… in theory it sounds good but I just don’t like how it looks right now, it looks like a part of the started text input, especially on the visual editor. I’d prefer to just have it where it’s always been, maybe with some extra horizontal space. This could totally be a knee-jerk reaction to just seeing it changed because it was perfectly fine and not really in need of change, but based on what I’ve seen In still not too sure on if I like it or not.

@chapoi

What about the AI suggest-title-button?

You’re definitely right that it looks lonely right now. Maybe it should anchor itself right where the title ends, or if the design is reverted like I suggested then the old way works fine.

I’m definitely a fan of this though. The design looks great (less borders!) and I’m excited about mobile finally being a usable experience even if I’m primarily a desktop user still.

[Don]

Hello

This is a really nice job! I love it. It feels like a much more modern and elegant way to compose. I also tried moving the toolbar to the bottom in the past, and I think it’s much more comfortable this way.

Overall, it looks pretty clean. One thing I noticed: when the title recedes and the body gets focus, it might be a bit confusing how to bring the title, category, etc., section back into view. Since the whole composer textarea is swipeable this case, I think adding a visual grip/handle could help indicate this to users.

[NateDhaliwal]

Was this inspired by the work on the docked composer for AI messages? Reminds me of it.

This seems to only be available on Meta Branded?

I like that the icons are smaller (I think?) and it’s a more minimalist design.

But I think one thing is that I now have to look higher to see what I’m typing, with the bar in the way. What if the toolbar was on top? Could that work? (On my phone now so I can’t move it to see)

[chapoi]

@NateDhaliwal

Was this inspired by the work on the docked composer for AI messages? Reminds me of it.

Not really

@NateDhaliwal

This seems to only be available on Meta Branded?

No, should be theme independent. You don’t see it on other themes?

[NateDhaliwal]

Okay, after a bit more looking around, is it possible to bring down the topic content editor when the keyboard is closed? Otherwise it takes 2 presses to do so (1 on the keyboard button, 1 to swipe).

I also find the colorless category icons a bit unusual. Is that intended?

And yes, the AI title suggester makes it feel a little crowded there, but I’m not sure where else it could be placed.

@chapoi

You don’t see it on other themes?

That happened for a but at the start. Looks like it’s working now.

Overall, not too bad on mobile so far!

[chapoi]

@NateDhaliwal

is it possible to bring down the topic content editor when the keyboard is closed? Otherwise it takes 2 presses to do so (1 on the keyboard button, 1 to swipe).

Can you elaborate on this? How are you closing the keyboard? The other direction should be automatic: shrinking the editor → keyboard closes automatically, so only 1 action.

[NateDhaliwal]

Oh! You mean swiping down to close the content composer and the keyboard? Hmm…

My personal experience is that I click the button in the home bar on Android to close the keyboard. Because this behaviour didn’t exist with the current composer (i.e. swipe or tap to close the keyboard), it feels more unnatural to me.

[chapoi]

Got it, should be okay to wire up I think.

[chapoi]

@NateDhaliwal

I also find the colorless category icons a bit unusual. Is that intended?

Accidental, thanks! Fix on the way

[asa]

I noticed that when you create a draft, it keeps popping up when you enter a topic, whereas the Composer doesn’t behave that way. Is this intended? (It’s a bit annoying for me)

[chapoi]

I’m not sure I follow. Do you mean when you have a draft for a certain topic, and you enter that topic, the composer opens up? If so, that’s been the case for a while (or forever, not sure); no behaviour has (intentionally) been changed in any case.

Or do you mean something else?

[asa]

I was slightly mistaken. The current Composer is indeed open, but it stays somewhat in the background, while the new Composer “blocks the view.” However, I’ve now discovered that you can move it

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

I like it, only posted from desktop so far.

Not a fan of the H1 title that looks like part of the textarea. I found myself clicking at the end of the title, then pressing ↓ to go to the line below, and it obviously didn’t work.

Large titles can be partially hidden:

On mobile, the toolbar is quite narrow. The way a thumb naturally moves from left to right on a smartphone screen isn’t a straight horizontal line. It’s slightly curved from bottom right top right top, and this effect might be increased if the target area is high on the screen.

This tends to make me miss the sidebar dragging toggle.

I’m not sure how to improve that. Making the toolbar taller seems not the best solution.

Perhaps the detection area could be slightly larger than the toolbar, the same way platform game developers allow the player’s character to jump from or land on an edge even if they are a few pixels too far and should normally fall.