The engineering team behind WordPress 7.0 has taken a decisive step beyond simply deactivating the real-time collaboration – RTC – tools. In the third release candidate, developers completely purged the RTC code from the software’s core, even as cleanup efforts continue within the Gutenberg repository.
This total removal in WordPress 7.0 RC3 follows a significant shift in direction. On Thursday, project lead Matt Mullenweg reached the decision to abandon the feature for this cycle, resulting in the immediate extraction of the collaborative infrastructure from the core codebase.
Emi Kamala, the release coordinator, officially announced the debut of RC3 on May 8 via the WordPress.org news blog. Her announcement effectively signals the end of a difficult and unstable period for real-time collaboration features during the 7.0 development timeline.
Initially, the approach might have been less drastic. Regarding the decision to pull the feature, Mullenweg noted in the WordPress Slack channel that he was not opposed to simply disabling the functionality to “safely ease it out.” However, the technical team chose a more permanent path by deleting the underlying infrastructure entirely.
While the RTC logic still exists within Gutenberg packages, it is no longer triggered by the core system. The build process now hides the wp.sync JavaScript global variable, making it invisible to third-party plugins and themes. At the time of the release, a separate pull request remained active in Gutenberg to shut down any remaining public APIs.
This update also clarified the roadmap for the final stretch of development. A schedule published in April had suggested RC3 would serve as a new Beta 1, with RC4 acting as the final candidate. Kamala’s statement corrected this, noting that the removal of RTC was not deemed a large enough change to warrant a full restart of the 7.0 cycle.
Despite the late-stage architectural changes and the removal of a headline feature, the release date remains firm. WordPress 7.0 is still scheduled to be available to the general public on May 20.
The RC3 announcement provides a cautious outlook for the future of collaborative editing. The documentation states the feature will be “re-evaluated during the 7.1 release cycle” – a phrasing that suggests a recommendation for review rather than a guarantee of its return in the next version.
“Real-time collaboration will not be included in WordPress 7.0”
The quote above, from contributor Anne McCarthy, previously framed the delay as a temporary pause for further testing. However, testing the feature has proven difficult; the activation toggle was reportedly missing from the Gutenberg experiments screen on local test sites, despite the release of Gutenberg 23.1 just hours before the core removal.
During the ensuing discussions, plugin team member Luke Carbis inquired if the functionality would be offered as a standalone plugin. McCarthy clarified that while testing is currently limited to the Gutenberg plugin, the possibility of a dedicated RTC plugin remains an “open” question for future consideration.
The arrival of RC3 follows a 43-day hiatus since the previous release candidate was issued on March 26. During this lengthy interval, the development community remained active, resolving more than 143 individual tickets in the Trac system.
For the broader developer ecosystem, this move necessitates immediate action. Any developers who began building applications or integrations based on the RTC JavaScript or REST interfaces during the beta period must now remove that code, as those interfaces will not exist in the final version of WordPress 7.0.
