Overall Goal

Make the admin bar an omnipresent, consistent navigation layer across all of WordPress. The admin bar is the most-seen piece of UI in WordPress, which makes it the main way users navigate the admin. But it isn't consistent today: it disappears in the Site Editor, and its structure changes across contexts. This iteration aims to improve the behavior.

Scope for This Release

Two main changes:

1. Omnipresence: on every surface, including the Site Editor. Render the admin bar in the Site Editor, where it currently disappears. This is one of the main places people work in WordPress, so the bar's navigation and quick links should be there too.
   • Bonus accessibility item: refreshed admin color schemes that meet current contrast standards and improve legibility.
2. Consistency: the same structure everywhere. The same items, in the same order, across desktop and mobile, wp-admin and the front end. Right now the structure changes between contexts, so what users learn in one place doesn't carry to the next.

Tasks

Omnipresence

• Add experiment to show admin bar in Post and Site Editor #77964
• Site Editor: Apply the user's admin color scheme #78397
• Editor: Hide cmd palette shortcut in document bar when admin bar is shown #79060
• Admin color schemes: make sidebars compatible with Gutenberg editor chrome by improving contrast wordpress-develop#12026

Core backport

• Make the experiment as default behavior in Core

Nice to Have

The above tasks themselves already solve numerous navigation issues. The below consistency-themed tasks will complement them.

Consistent structure across contexts

• Admin bar: Replace home/odometer dashicon with actual site icon if set wordpress-develop#11781
• Admin bar: Always show site title on mobile and move shortcut menus under it wordpress-develop#11786

Open Questions & Decisions required

TBA

Contributors

• @fushar