WordPress Studio is a free local development tool designed to help developers build plugins, themes, and full WordPress sites. The recent 1.5.1 release introduces more flexible environment customization, including support for setting your preferred code editor and terminal application directly in Studio.
This has been one of our most requested features, especially with tools like Cursor becoming more popular. The new Preferences interface lays the groundwork for supporting even more tools over time.
How to configure your preferences
To set your preferred code editor and terminal, open the Settings modal. Click “Howdy, [your name]” or “WordPress.com login” if you’re not signed in.
Select the Preferences tab in the modal window. From there, you can choose your preferred code editor and terminal application.
The following options are currently supported:
Code editors:
- Visual Studio Code
- Cursor
- Windsurf
- PHPStorm
- WebStorm
Terminal applications:
- Terminal (Mac)
- Command Prompt (Windows)
- Warp
- Ghostty (Mac)
- iTerm2 (Mac)
Note: To appear as selectable options in your Studio Preferences, the applications must be installed on your computer. On macOS, they need to be in /Applications or /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Applications.
Once you have made your selections, click Save. You can change your preferences at any time.
Once saved, the buttons on each site’s Overview tab will update to match your chosen tools. Here, you can see the user has configured the Terminal app on Mac and Cursor.
What’s next for Studio?
We’re actively improving Studio to make it the best local WordPress development tool. Here are a few updates coming in the future:
- Integration with Pressable: Sync and deploy full sites to Pressable-hosted websites.
- An enhanced command-line interface (CLI): Studio will better support streamlined development workflows.
You can track progress, preview upcoming features, and make your own requests in the Studio GitHub repository.
Studio is just over a year old, and 2025 will be an important year for the open source project. If you haven’t recently used Studio, now is a great time to download the latest version for free and explore new features like Studio Assistant and Studio Sync.
If you’re interested in contributing to Studio, perhaps by adding support for additional code editors or terminal applications, we would love to see your contributions in the GitHub repository.
WordPress.com News 
When I read the first paragraph and didn’t understand most of what it says, I think, Just more excuses and BS, for the disaster called the Block Editor, which destroyed the website I built on my own years ago under what’s now known, I think, as the classic editor.
After failing repeatedly to rebuild that crashed site with the Block Editor, WordPress offered to do it for me for $500 into the thousands.
That’s why I paid someone else to rebuild my site on Google’s Blogger and move my domain name there from WordPress. I’m still on Blogger even though the site isn’t as good as the original one I built on my own by myself with the classic editor more than a decade ago.
And if this email bounces back to me because this WordPress email was set up not to receive replies, I won’t be surprised.
Lloyd Lofthouse
Thanks for sharing your story, Lloyd. Sorry to hear the shift from the classic editor caused so much frustration—it’s understandable how that would be discouraging.
This post is about Studio, a local development tool for developers, but we know changes to editing tools can impact all kinds of users.
If you ever decide to return to WordPress.com, there are still ways to work with more familiar tools, including the classic block and other options that offer more control. We appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.
Great new features!
Love the steady updates and improvements of the product.
Would be great if you could also set a default folder for new projects.
Instead of the default /Users/$USER/Studio path.
Thanks for the kind words—we’re glad you’re enjoying the updates!
You can actually set a default folder for new projects in the Advanced settings. There are more details on how to do that in the Studio developer documentation. Hope that helps!
Thanks for sharing, Nick.
You’re most welcome!
Thanks Nick. Usefull
Glad you found this useful. If there is anything else you would like to see added to Studio, let us know!
These new customization options in Studio are a great boost for WordPress developers looking to streamline their workflow. At Digimind Pro, we’re always looking for ways to enhance efficiency and deliver faster results—this update is definitely a step in the right direction!
Thanks for the comment! Glad to hear the update supports your focus on efficiency—more improvements are on the way.
that’s too good
Awesome 😎 dude
I tried to Download WordPress Studio. but, i can’t find a suitable version for my Linux PC.
So, I’m still using my self hosted WordPress installation with Docker on my local PC.
waiting for the Linux version.
Hey there, while there is no official Linux release yet, Studio works on Linux when built locally from source. Check out the instructions in this comment.