How to remove fields of navigation menu names now appearing in menu and sitemap?

  • Unknown's avatar
    eilim1506d26d0f · Member ·

    All the past, the names of navigation menus did not appear in the pages, posts and the revisions under WordPress.com host.

    Since I logged in yesterday (10 May 2026), the names appear in the menu (as circled in following screenshot) and also in sitemap together with multiple “Navigation Menu:” which seem to be field labels.

    Note that these are NOT text added as blocks, which can be deleted, as shown in the screenshot.

    The names and field labels are also appearing in past revisions (see following screenshot) when the revisions were saved without the names and field labels appearing.

    The published site have been showing without the names and field labels appearing (see following screenshot).

    Could someone help advising how to stop the menu names and field labels from appearing? Till now the issue has not been resolved hence I cannot publish my content change else risk affecting the site.

    What was the cause since it happened while I was not logged in?

    Note that I am using “Twenty Twenty-Four” theme.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    kian0engel · Member ·

    Hi! Looking at your screenshots, the news is much better than it might feel right now. What you’re seeing is editor UI, not content. Your published site is completely fine, and there’s nothing for you to fix or roll back.

    Here’s what those labels actually are:

    The text “Navigation Menu: ‘Footer navigation 3′” appearing above the navigation in your editor view is a block label added by the Site Editor itself. It’s there to help you identify which named menu the Navigation block is pointing to while you’re editing, in this case, “Footer navigation 3”. The empty Navigation Menu: "" you see in the older revision is the same label showing that, in that revision, the block didn’t have a named menu assigned yet.

    These labels live only inside the editor canvas. They are not stored in your content, and they are not rendered on the published site. Your third screenshot (the live sarumcastle.wordpress.com header) confirms this — the navigation shows cleanly, with no labels.

    Why it appeared “while you weren’t logged in”: It didn’t, technically. What changed is the editor itself. The block editor pushes updates regularly to improve usability, and a recent change added more visible labels in the Site Editor canvas to make it easier to identify Navigation blocks. (It’s common to have several Navigation blocks in a site — header, footer, mobile — and the labels make it much easier to tell which is which at a glance.) Because the labels are rendered by the current editor, every revision you open will now display them too — even revisions saved before the update. The labels are being drawn by the current editor view, not pulled from your saved content.

    What I’d suggest:

    1. You can publish safely. Your live site is unaffected by what you’re seeing in the editor canvas.
    2. If the labels are distracting while editing, clicking outside the Navigation block (somewhere else on the canvas) usually reduces the visual chrome. The labels are most prominent when the block is selected or hovered.
    3. If you’d like a definitive confirmation that there’s no setting to hide them (or you’re still uncomfortable publishing), it’s worth filing a ticket through wordpress.com/support/contact. They can confirm directly that the labels aren’t part of your stored content.

    The shortest version: nothing is broken on your published site. The labels you’re seeing are the editor telling you which menu the block points to, not text that’s going out to readers.

  • Unknown's avatar
    eilim1506d26d0f · Member ·

    @kian0engel — thanks for your detailed reply, the explanation really helped me understand what happened.

    Those fields and labels have now disappeared, so I assume there has been another update to the editor. Perhaps the change came after feedback on this confusion, since most people expect the preview area on the right to show only site content while block identification would be done on the left.

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