Changelog

• Bricks now has many new recipes, including ?flex-grid, ?center-*, gradient helpers, ?tooltip, ?footer-reveal, ?skip-link, ?font-face, ?corner-ribbon and pseudo-selector shortcuts like ?::before and ?:hover. Learn more
• Recipes now work without turning on Variable Expansion & Validation. That setting now only controls the automatic var(), calc() and bracket corrections.
• Several recipes have new defaults: ?columns uses 350px columns with no rule, ?variable-grid uses a 350px minimum, ?concentric-radius adds --inner-radius, the divider recipes skip edge spacing and the fade recipes support --fade-softness. Learn more
• Color recipes like ?primary-clr expand to working OKLCH relative colors again.
• Recipes now use ? in every builder and in the dashboard. The old @ trigger is gone.
• The broken ?breakpoint-xs to ?breakpoint-up-xxl recipes were removed. Use your builder’s breakpoints or a normal media query instead (community thread).

• You can set your license key with an ACSS_LICENSE_KEY constant in wp-config.php. It activates automatically, and the license screen shows which domain the license is active on. Learn more
• New Check for updates now button on the license screen. Learn more
• After updating from Automatic.css 3, the license screen no longer stays locked when the old license has nothing left to release. While it is still being released, the screen tells you why and when the next attempt runs.
• Failed license activations and deactivations now show up in the Activity Log.
• wp acss license get shows where the key comes from and which site it is activated on. Learn more

• Import and export your settings from the dashboard header menu, including unsaved changes. Learn more
• Importing an Automatic.css 3 settings file now converts it for v4 automatically. Learn more
• Reset to defaults moved into the header menu, with clearer confirmations and a press-and-hold reset. Learn more
• Download and clear the Activity Log right from the settings page. Learn more
• Number fields accept values like 480px, 2rem and 1.2em, and upgrades no longer get stuck on “There are some settings that needs to be fixed” (community thread).
• When saving fails, the dashboard now shows the real reason and keeps the back button visible.
• The live preview waits for the right editor canvas, so it no longer fails to start in the block editor (community thread).
• In Bricks, paste, undo, copy and other editing shortcuts work in dashboard text fields again (community thread).
• Dashboard shortcuts no longer block browser shortcuts like Inspect Element while the dashboard is closed (community thread).

• ACSS shades are grouped under each main color in a single “ACSS Colors” palette. Learn more
• The variable context menu only offers variables ACSS 4 actually generates, including the new width tokens (community thread).
• The “Import Original Classes for Templates” setting works again.
• The Grid Visualizer stays hidden when you turn it off.

• WS Form styling now applies with Layer utilities and the WS Form Styler, and the focus outline is back (community thread).
• Error color, secondary color and tooltip radius keep working when the related ACSS options are off.
• The settings for section legend weight, inside label scale and navigation borders now affect your forms.

• Outline buttons use their own focus color settings.
• “Use Global Transition Style” for links now works as expected.
• The 2XL icon size and padding settings now generate correctly.

• Enter and exit effects can be combined on the same element, and on-enter--parallax moves even when other entrance effects are enabled (community thread).

• Activity and debug logs use unguessable file names.
• Update checks only run for administrators, cron and WP-CLI.
• On multisite and other installs without unfiltered_html, site administrators can edit Global CSS again, with imports limited to Automatic.css files. Learn more

• Pages no longer lose their ACSS styles when a request sends JSON headers. This prevented unstyled pages from ending up in your page cache (community thread).
• Regenerating CSS rebuilds your Custom CSS when its source file is missing, so custom styles no longer disappear.
• On multisite, ACSS tells you to network-deactivate Automatic.css 3 first, and the upgrade keeps third-party settings like Frames toggles.
• Cheat sheet documentation links point to docs.automaticcss.com, and the color preview no longer shows a swatch for keywords like currentcolor or inherit.

WS Form radio and checkbox group titles now inherit .form–dark and .form–light styling when WS Form renders them as div.wsf-label.

PHP 8.4 no longer fills error logs with ACSS deprecation notices from implicitly nullable parameters.

Remaining dashboard documentation links now point to docs.automaticcss.com instead of retired documentation URLs.

• License activation and deactivation now always give you clear feedback — before, some messages were silently swallowed and it looked like nothing happened.
• If your previous Automatic.css 3 license is still being released in the background, the license tab now tells you so in plain language instead of blocking activation invisibly.
• Entering an Automatic.css 3 key now tells you exactly that: “This license key belongs to Automatic.css 3. Automatic.css 4 requires its own license key — please copy it from your account.”
• Deleting or replacing a license key now works reliably, even in edge cases where the licensing server couldn’t confirm the old activation.
• Sites whose outbound connections are blocked by a firewall can no longer get permanently stuck during the license handover.

• Hover arrows from color rows no longer float over the header when you scroll.
  The color preview swatch now works for every CSS color, including color-mix(), oklch() and light-dark() values.

• Fixed a bug where forms silently fell back to WS Form’s default black-and-white styling instead of your ACSS colors, and the floating label lost its background on focus. Form fields, labels, tabs and legends now follow your ACSS tokens again, and changing a base color in the dashboard flows through to all dependent fields — including live preview.
• The Form Styling fields now show the ACSS tokens you already know (–text-dark, –white, –text-m and friends) instead of internal variable names. Values you set yourself are kept exactly as they were.
• Field focus colors now follow your site-wide Focus Color setting (Additional Styling), so a focused field can’t be mistaken for an invalid one on palettes with a red primary.
• New setting: Floating Label Background (Form Styling → Label). Give the floated label its own background color — handy when your field background is translucent or differs from the surface behind the form.

• Smooth scrolling now works in Firefox.
• The WordPress Widgets screen no longer throws console errors caused by ACSS.
• 404 pages for URLs under /wp-admin/ are styled correctly again.
• debug.log is no longer written when logging is disabled.

Automatic.css 4.0.0 installs as a new plugin. Follow our upgrade guide to move from a 4.x prerelease. This is a one-time manual upgrade — future Automatic.css 4 updates will be delivered through your WordPress dashboard.

Manage your Automatic.css license with WP-CLI. View the available commands.

Transparent color swatches now insert modern color-mix(in oklch, var(--primary) 10%, transparent) values instead of generated -trans-* variables — all while retaining the utility class names you already use.

Dashboard help links open the ACSS cheat sheet when available, while documentation, community, and support links now take you to their latest destinations.

License requests now identify themselves to our servers — groundwork for resolving activation issues on hosts that are currently challenged by our firewall.

License activation and checks are less likely to be disrupted by third-party plugins, and now include information that helps us prevent Cloudflare from blocking legitimate requests. (ACSS-614) – Unfortunately, that doesn’t yet fix the current issues we’re having with Cloudflare (CF-Ray-XXXXXXX…).