What is QuickPress?
QuickPress was a WordPress dashboard widget for quickly writing and publishing blog posts. WordPress 3.8, released December 12, 2013, renamed it Quick Draft and removed direct publishing: the widget now takes a title and content, saves the post as a draft, and lists your most recent drafts.
More About QuickPress
QuickPress, now called Quick Draft, offers a fast way to set up initial post drafts from the WordPress dashboard home screen. WordPress 3.8, released December 12, 2013, renamed QuickPress to Quick Draft as part of its dashboard redesign, and the widget still carries the Quick Draft name in WordPress 7.0.3, the current release as of August 2026. You can use the widget to set a title, write the initial outline for a post, and flesh it out later.
We don’t recommend using Quick Draft for writing entire blog posts because the widget lacks WordPress‘s full editing functionality. The Quick Draft widget doesn’t have formatting options, blocks, or other editor features. Instead, it offers a simple text box for writing content and another for setting its title.
The Quick Draft widget also includes a list of your own most recent post drafts. On a multi-author site, you see your drafts, not your co-authors’. You can use these links to open the editor for a chosen draft.
Where to find and hide Quick Draft
Quick Draft is one of the five widgets WordPress puts on the Dashboard Home screen by default, alongside At a Glance, Activity, WordPress Events and News, and Welcome. If you never use it, click the Screen Options tab at the top of that screen and uncheck Quick Draft to hide it; check the box again to bring it back. You can also drag any widget by its title bar to rearrange the screen.
From Quick Draft to published post
Quick Draft can’t publish anything: its only button is Save Draft. That’s the functional change WordPress 3.8 made, since the old QuickPress widget could publish straight from the dashboard. Clicking Save Draft stores the post with Draft status, so it shows up in the widget’s recent-drafts list and under Posts → All Posts. When you’re ready to finish the post, open it in the full post editor to add blocks, formatting, categories, and tags, and publish from there. Treat the widget as a capture tool: save the idea the moment you have it, then do the real writing in the editor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which user roles can use the Quick Draft widget?
Anyone who can create posts. With WordPress's default roles, that's Contributors, Authors, Editors, and Administrators; Subscribers don't get the widget. It also appears only on a site's own dashboard, so you won't find it on a multisite Network Admin screen.
Can Quick Draft create pages or custom post types?
No. Quick Draft creates blog-post drafts only; its form submits with the post type fixed to 'post'. To start a page or a custom post type, use its own Add New screen in the admin menu.
Is QuickPress still in WordPress?
Only in the code. The dashboard label has read Quick Draft since 2013, but current WordPress still registers the widget under the ID dashboard_quick_press, and the core comment above that line still says 'QuickPress Widget'. Developer code that hides or moves the widget targets that old name.
