Gallery and Tiled Gallery: Block settings should apply whether carousel is enabled or not

[jamiepalatnik]

When adding a gallery block or tiled gallery block, clicking an image will always open the carousel no matter what block settings are selected. The block settings allow you to link to Attachment Page, Media File, or None, but these settings are not applied.

Steps to reproduce the issue

1. Add a new gallery block or tiled gallery block
2. Click on the block and then select one of the options under "Link to" in the block settings.
3. Publish the page

What I expected

The option selected in the block settings would apply.

What happened instead

Clicking any image in the gallery opens a carousel, even if the option Attachment Page, Media File, or None is selected.

Reported in 9770247-hc Discussed this here: p1549297057187700-slack-triage

[jeherve]

This is currently done on purpose, both with the classic editor and the block editor, but that could indeed be done.

If we were to implement this, should we add a new "Carousel" option to the dropdown, and have this be the new default option? If so, that would mean that the Carousel would disappear from all previous galleries / images on the site. Or should we expect the "Attachment" choice to trigger the Carousel modal?

[jamiepalatnik]

I can see benefits to both approaches, but I'm not sure which would be best. I'd be interested to hear other thoughts. To me, the Media File choice looks closest to the Carousel, but as it is now you can't navigate to other images in the gallery.

Other ideas:

• Hide "Link to" options when carousel is enabled, since "Link to" options do not apply to slideshows.
• Make it possible to enable or disable carousels from the block settings (possibly with a checkbox or a link to the setting in WP Admin)

[nagpai]

Currently, the user seems to get confused when nothing seems to change when they select either Media file / Attachment page / None in the options of the block.

It would be better to hide the option if it does not do anything.

We may check how this works in the CoBlocks masonry block, it seems to be working fine there.

14328242-hc

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been marked as stale. This happened because:

• It has been inactive in the past 6 months.
• It hasn’t been labeled `[Pri] Blocker`, `[Pri] High`.

No further action is needed. But it's worth checking if this ticket has clear reproduction steps and it is still reproducible. Feel free to close this issue if you think it's not valid anymore — if you do, please add a brief explanation.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been marked as stale. This happened because:

• It has been inactive in the past 6 months.
• It hasn’t been labeled `[Pri] Blocker`, `[Pri] High`.

No further action is needed. But it's worth checking if this ticket has clear reproduction steps and it is still reproducible. Feel free to close this issue if you think it's not valid anymore — if you do, please add a brief explanation.

[akmyta]

Came across another report here: hc-23317851

[aleone89]

This has come up here: zen-3523673

It would be better to hide the option if it does not do anything.

I agree - this option is misleading.

[rinazrina]

Another report: #28456513-hc

[jartes]

Had another one on 33932262-hc. The user wanted to "unlink" all the images, and only display them with no link.

[mgozdis]

Another report in 40401325-hc. The user wanted to link the images to attachment page to show more info as mentioned in documentation.

[jeherve]

Also mentioned in #30721.

[ClassicRKR27]

Another report here: 6520784-zd-woothemes

Gave them the workaround of disabling the Enable Carousel option under Settings > Media since it's a simple site, but I'm not sure if this will be what they want for the whole site.

[github-actions[bot]]

Support References

This comment is automatically generated. Please do not edit it.

• [ ] 6520784-zen
• [ ] 8236853-zen

[pauljacobson]

We have another report of this issue for a Gallery Block in 8236853-zen where the theme is Rowling. This is a plugn-enabled WordPress.com site.

@jeherve Can we revisit this decision for these blocks? There is a toggle in the current Gallery Block, for example, to enable a lightbox even though the default action seems to enable this anyway. This frustrates users who specifically want the "None" linking option to disable clicks on the images.

[jeherve]

Can we revisit this decision for these blocks?

The issue is still open, so we can certainly revisit this.

There is a toggle in the current Gallery Block, for example, to enable a lightbox even though the default action seems to enable this anyway.

This seems to be a different issue. The Lightbox toggle (added by WordPress core) shouldn't appear at all when the Carousel feature is active. See #36565 for more information.

If the Lighbox now appears in some scenarios, that would be a bug deserving its own issue.

Thank you!

[masperber]

On my WordPress.com simple site I've reproduced this issue. Clicking on a Gallery image opens a Lightbox regardless of whether the Gallery block link setting is set to "Attachment Page," "Media File," or "None."