#30 by installs
Advanced Editor Tools
Extends and enhances the block editor (Gutenberg) and the classic editor (TinyMCE).
- Installs
- 1+ million
- Rating
- 4.5 (354)
- Updated
- 2 months ago
Black Studio TinyMCE Widget
The visual editor widget for WordPress.
- Active installs
- 200,000+
- #234 of 1,000
- Downloads, all time
- 11.3M
- 11,301,766
- Downloads, 30 days
- 26.4K
- 6.6K in the last 7
- Rating
- 4.8 / 5
- 191 reviews
- Last updated
- 2 months ago
- Aug 20, 2026
- Version
- 2.7.4
- 83 releases
Upkeep and compatibility
| Last updated | August 20, 2026Updated in the last 3 months |
|---|---|
| Tested up to | WordPress 7.1.4Covers WordPress 7.1.4, the current release |
| Needs WordPress | 5.0 or newer |
| Needs PHP | 5.2 or newer |
| First published | November 10, 2011 |
| Support, last two months | No threads opened |
Reviews
4.8 / 5 from 191 reviews
| 5 stars | 173 |
|---|---|
| 4 stars | 8 |
| 3 stars | 2 |
| 2 stars | 3 |
| 1 star | 5 |
Downloads, last 30 days
What the author says it does
This plugin adds a new Visual Editor widget type that allows you to insert rich text and media objects in your sidebars with no hassle. With Black Studio TinyMCE Widget you will be able to edit your widgets in a WYSIWYG manner using the native WordPress TinyMCE editor, just like you do in posts and pages. And if you are a developer you may still switch back and forth from Visual to HTML mode.
For years the default WordPress text widget has been very basic and it required HTML knowledge to add formatting and images/media to the text. This plugin was born in 2011 to overcome these limitations. After a long time, in June 2017, version 4.8 of WordPress finally introduced a new text widget that included the ability to manage text widgets with the visual editor. The new widget available in WordPress core could now be used as a basic replacement of Black Studio TinyMCE Widget, but the plugin still offers some additional features, so it remains a must-have for advanced users.
Basic Features
- Add rich text widgets to your sidebars and edit them using the TinyMCE visual editor
- Switch between Visual mode and HTML mode (including Quicktags toolbar)
- Insert images, videos, and other media from WordPress Media Library
- Insert links to existing WordPress pages/posts or external resources
- Support for shortcodes, smilies and embed in widget text (including preview)
The opening of the plugin's own description. The full text, installation notes and changelog are on its WordPress.org page.
Questions the author answers
Purpose of the plugin
This plugin gives you the ability to use the WordPress visual editor (TinyMCE) in widgets as you do in posts and pages, but it doesn’t affect the editor behavior itself or its functionalities. If you are looking for additional editor features, take a look at plugins like WP Edit, TinyMCE Advanced or any other feature specific plugin you may need.
Troubleshooting
If you are experiencing issues with the plugin please read entirely these FAQ before posting a new topic in our support forum. Most of the times issues are caused by incompatibility with other plugins or themes, which may prevent our plugin from working as expected. In order to troubleshoot issues please complete the following steps:
Can’t find it in my available widgets
Since version 1.3.1 the name of the widget changed from Black Studio TinyMCE Widget to Visual Editor to enhance user-friendliness. Black Studio TinyMCE Widget is still the name of the plugin, but it was a bit too long and not very intuitive for inexperienced users.
Widgets disappeared after migrating or changing the site URL
When dealing with a WordPress site URL change it is necessary to face the serialized fields issue: data may become corrupted if using a simple search/replace (see the Codex for further info). This is not an issue specifically related to our plugin, but it affects all the parts (plugins, themes and WordPress core files too) that use serialized data archiving.
How to translate widgets using WPML
WPML is the leading commercial plugin for WordPress multi-language sites.
If you’re using WPML v3.8 or newer and you need to translate a widget, we recommend to create a separate widget for each language of your site and assign the language to each widget accordingly using the selector “Display on language” provided by WPML. This way you will be able to work with the visual editor also for translations.
How to embed video and other contents
WordPress has a nice autoembed feature that allows you to embed videos and other stuff in an easy way, by just putting the URL in the content area. This is also possible for widgets created with this plugin.
If you are using a version of WordPress prior to 4.0 or a version of Black Studio TinyMCE Widget prior to 2.0, for best results it is recommended to put the URL inside an [embed] shortcode. Example:
Latest changelog entry
- Updated compatibility info with WordPress 7.1
- Updated minimum required WordPress version to 5.0
- Removed donation link
Screenshots
Black Studio TinyMCE Widget in Visual mode 
Black Studio TinyMCE Widget in HTML mode 
Black Studio TinyMCE Widget combined with WP Edit plugin
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Where this page's numbers come from
Read from the WordPress.org plugin API on , when WordPress 7.1.4 was the current release. WordPress.org rounds active installs into buckets. These are the directory's figures, not my verdict, and I haven't tested this plugin.