Your WordPress admin, reimagined as a desktop. Every admin screen opens as a draggable, resizable window — edit a post, browse the Media Library, and moderate comments side by side instead of one page at a time.
Desktop Mode is opt-in per user: one click in the admin bar switches you in, one click switches you back. Nobody else on the site sees any change, and deactivating the plugin restores the classic admin exactly. Zero Core patches — every feature runs through public WordPress hooks.
Built and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Tumblr.
A real desktop
- Windows — drag, resize, minimize, maximize, snap, tile. Every admin page works, including plugin pages.
- Dock & taskbar — the admin menu becomes an icon dock; open windows live in a macOS-style taskbar.
- Virtual desktops (Spaces) — one desktop for writing, another for the store, another for moderation.
- Files on the desktop — drop posts, media, and links onto the wallpaper, organize them into folders, trash them to a Recycle Bin.
- Session restore — reload the browser and every window comes back exactly where you left it.
Make it yours
- Wallpapers — color presets, animated scenes, or your own image.
- Widgets & desktop icons — pin live widgets and shortcuts to the wallpaper; plugins can register their own.
Superpowers
- AI Assistant (optional) — press Cmd+K and ask ”Which post had the comment asking for the recipe?” It searches your own content. Off by default; see ”External services” below.
- Content Graph — an interactive, zoomable map of how your posts, pages, and products link together.
- Cross-window drag & drop — drag an image from the Media Library window straight into the editor in another window.
- Command palette — the full WordPress command palette plus slash commands from plugins, all under Cmd+K.
Built to be extended
Every significant behavior is hookable. Register windows, dock items, wallpapers, widgets, desktop icons, commands, settings tabs, and AI tools from your own plugin — stable desktop_mode_register_* PHP APIs, a typed JavaScript API, and copy-paste examples in the developer docs on GitHub.
External services
This plugin’s optional AI Assistant sends data to OpenAI (https://api.openai.com/v1/responses) when, and only when, an administrator configures an OpenAI API key in Settings → AI. With no key configured, no external requests are made.
When the AI Assistant is enabled and a user invokes it (via Cmd+K or the slash-command palette):
- What is sent: the user’s prompt, the conversation history for the active session, the chosen model identifier (e.g.
gpt-4o-mini), and tool-call metadata. The plugin’s built-in tools (search_posts,search_pages,search_comments) run WordPress’s native keyword search and may include excerpts of the matching posts/pages/comments in tool results, which are then sent back to OpenAI as part of the agentic loop. - When it is sent: on user-initiated AI requests, and (if enabled) on comment-save hooks for spam analysis. Comment spam analysis runs server-side as part of the comment-insert flow. Posts, pages, and taxonomy terms are not sent automatically.
- Why it is sent: to obtain model completions and tool-call decisions that drive the AI Assistant.
- Who provides the service: OpenAI, L.L.C. — see the OpenAI Terms of Use and the OpenAI Privacy Policy.
The AI Assistant’s provider layer is also extensible: third-party plugins may register additional providers via desktop_mode_register_ai_provider(). Those providers may send data to other endpoints; review each plugin’s own privacy disclosure separately.
No other external services are contacted by this plugin.
Credits
Desktop Mode is brought to you by Automattic. The plugin is open source under GPLv2-or-later; contributions are welcome on GitHub.
Third-party libraries
The plugin bundles the following third-party JavaScript library, loaded on demand only when a feature that needs it is in use:
- PixiJS (MIT License) — used by the interactive OS Settings → About scene, the Content Graph window, and built-in canvas wallpapers (e.g. the animated WordPress logo). PixiJS is loaded from the plugin’s own
assets/vendor/directory; no CDN requests are made.