Mosaic keeps growing, but there are a few things it doesn’t do today. This page collects them in one place, so you can plan your project with no surprises.
WordPress.com Free plan
Mosaic can’t be installed on sites using the WordPress.com Free plan, because that plan doesn’t allow installing plugins at all. To use Mosaic on WordPress.com, you need a paid plan, which lets you upload plugins as a .zip file. See Install a plugin in the WordPress.com guides for details.
No public developer API
We’re happy to see developers interested in building add-ons for Mosaic. Right now, though, there is no official API for third-party add-ons. We do plan to build one, and the groundwork is already in place, but it isn’t the right time yet.
Here’s why:
- Things are still changing. Mosaic’s internal data format, element structure, CSS class names, and saved data can change between versions. Even a small update could break an add-on that relies on them.
- It’s hard to tell what broke. When an add-on stops working, it looks like Mosaic is broken. That makes it harder for us to help you quickly.
- It would slow Mosaic down. If add-ons depended on the current internals, every improvement we make would first have to be checked against them. We’d rather keep making Mosaic better for everyone.
- It would cost developers time. An add-on built today would likely need to be rewritten several times, and once more when the official API arrives.
So for now, we kindly ask you not to build add-ons that rely on Mosaic’s internals. When the core is stable, we’ll announce the official API in our community.
If you need custom functionality on your site today, you can use the Code element to add your own HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or the Shortcode element to show content from other WordPress plugins.
Please note that we don’t offer support for custom code. Any code you add to your site is managed by you.
No built-in translation
Mosaic can’t translate your frontend pages on its own. To create a multilingual site, you need a translation plugin. See Translating Mosaic pages for the plugins we’ve tested and how they work with Mosaic.
Styling complex Gutenberg blocks
With Gutenberg styles, you can style the most common blocks of your posts, like headings, paragraphs, images, lists, quotes, and buttons.
More complex blocks, such as Gallery, Table, Accordion, or Columns, and the Custom HTML block are not supported. They still display on your site, but you can’t style them in Mosaic. To make sure they look right, add your own CSS for them. See Styling custom HTML for an example.
No sub-submenus
Your menus can have one level of submenus, but sub-submenus are not supported. See WP menu for how menus work in the Navbar.
Only basic sliders
The Slider element shows one slide at a time. You can place several cards side by side inside one slide, but you can’t build a responsive Carousel with it. On smaller screens, the cards don’t spread across more slides. They can only stack below each other inside the same slide.
A Showcase slider, which keeps the active slide in the middle with the others beside it, can’t be built either.
If you need one of these, you can create it with Smart Slider 3 Pro and add it to your page with the Shortcode element.
Video autoplay
This one isn’t a Mosaic limitation. Browsers and devices decide whether a video can play on its own. For example, most browsers only autoplay muted videos, and phones in Low Power Mode don’t autoplay videos at all. See Video autoplay for the full list.