Directory / plugin

Blockshifter

v0.3.0 · by Ange Chierchia

Transform native Gutenberg blocks into alternate display variants without leaving the editor.

View on WordPress.org

About this plugin

Blockshifter is a growing toolbox of display modes for native Gutenberg blocks — no new block types, no leaving the block editor, no learning curve.

Pick a block you already use — Gallery, Group — flip a toggle in its Inspector, and its front-end output transforms. The block itself stays 100% native and editable; nothing about how you write content changes.

Think of Blockshifter as a shape-shifter for your blocks: same content underneath, a different shape on the front end. Today it shifts into a Carousel or a Masonry grid; tomorrow more shapes join the same toolbox, each just as simple to switch on.

Carousel, live today

A clean, minimalist carousel for Gallery and Group blocks, powered by Splide.js — lightweight, accessible, dependency-free. Arrows and pagination are styled to sit quietly on top of your content, in any color, on any background.

  • One toggle to turn a block into a carousel
  • Slides per page
  • Autoplay
  • Infinite loop
  • Fully responsive, keyboard and screen-reader friendly out of the box

Masonry, live today

A compact, variable-height masonry grid for Gallery and Group blocks, built with native CSS Grid — no third-party library. Every native Gutenberg setting stays in charge: Columns and Gap on Gallery, Gap on Group.

  • One toggle to turn a block into a masonry grid
  • Columns (Group only — Gallery keeps its own native Columns control)
  • Respects each block’s native Gap and responsive behavior
  • Degrades gracefully to a regular grid without JavaScript

More shapes are coming

Accordion and other display modes are on the roadmap. Every future module follows the exact same pattern you already know: pick a block, flip a toggle, done.

For developers

The list of blocks a module targets is filterable, so you can extend any module to other core blocks without forking the plugin — the filter name follows blockshifter/<module>/allowed_blocks:

add_filter( 'blockshifter/carousel/allowed_blocks', function( $blocks ) {
    $blocks[] = 'core/columns';
    return $blocks;
} );

add_filter( 'blockshifter/masonry/allowed_blocks', function( $blocks ) {
    $blocks[] = 'core/columns';
    return $blocks;
} );

Privacy

Blockshifter includes a fully opt-in telemetry feature — disabled by default, and no data is ever sent before you explicitly enable it from Settings > Blockshifter.

When enabled, once a week (and once immediately after you opt in), the plugin sends this anonymous payload to https://api.blockshifter.dev/v1/telemetry:

  • A random installation identifier (a UUID generated locally, not tied to your identity or your site’s URL)
  • The Blockshifter, WordPress and PHP version numbers
  • Which Blockshifter modules (Carousel, Masonry…) are detected in your rendered content

No page content, no URL, no username, no email address and no IP address is stored. You can disable telemetry at any time from Settings > Blockshifter, which also stops all further data collection.

Full privacy policy: https://blockshifter.dev/privacy.html

Development

Source code, build tools and issue tracker: https://github.com/nighcrawl/Blockshifter

The src/ directory contains the human-readable, unminified source for everything shipped in build/. See the repository’s README for the build steps (composer install && npm install && npm run build).

Plugin tags