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Black Studio TinyMCE Widget

By Black Studio

Content Management / Blog & Article Publishing

Reviewed by Abdul Hameid

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Black Studio TinyMCE Widget Review - In-Depth Analysis

The Black Studio TinyMCE Widget enhances WordPress by adding a visual editor widget. It allows users to insert rich text and media into sidebars easily. This plugin supports switching between visual and HTML modes, making it user-friendly for all skill levels.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

7.37/10

User Rating

4.8/5 (based on 191+ reviews)

Active Installations

200,000+

Update Frequency

Very Good It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

1 / 10 (Very Low Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

The Black Studio TinyMCE Widget is a powerful tool for WordPress users who want to add rich text and media to their sidebars. This plugin introduces a new Visual Editor widget type that utilizes the native WordPress TinyMCE editor, allowing for a WYSIWYG editing experience similar to that of posts and pages.

Originally developed to address the limitations of the default WordPress text widget, this plugin has evolved to include advanced features that enhance usability. Users can easily switch between visual and HTML modes, insert various media types from the WordPress Media Library, and utilize shortcodes and smilies within the widget text.

Furthermore, the plugin is compatible with the Block-based Widgets Editor introduced in WordPress 5.8 and supports live preview in the Customizer. It is also designed to work well with multi-site installations and popular multi-language plugins, making it a versatile choice for diverse WordPress setups.

Comparing to Alternatives

Black Studio TinyMCE Widget sits in a crowded field of classic-editor and text-widget tools that emerged after the Gutenberg transition. Many alternatives aim to restore similar WYSIWYG widget functionality, but this plugin remains one of the longest-standing and most trusted options in the category.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Long track record with a very high satisfaction rating (4.8/5 from 191 reviews)
Simple, focused functionality that just adds a reliable TinyMCE editor to widgets
No known security vulnerabilities on record
Lightweight compared to full classic editor suites that restore entire post-editing screens

Weaknesses

Lacks some advanced media handling, such as image rollover/mouseover effects
Overlaps heavily with newer, actively promoted alternatives that may receive more frequent updates

User Sentiment Analysis

With 191 ratings and a 4.8/5 average, sentiment is overwhelmingly positive. Over 90% of reviewers gave 5 stars, and only 4.2% left a 1 or 2 star rating, suggesting the plugin reliably does what users expect.

Positive highlights

"This is a very useful plugin" for adding widget options — kinnarrk
"Works very well, makes my life easier" — astandet
"Very stable plugin. No annoying reminders... Superb." — Gary55
"Great plugin and easypeasy to use!" — nealumphred
"It's a very good and simple visual editor" — Sirio

Common complaints

Weaknesses

Missing more advanced formatting options like image rollovers, according to at least one reviewer
As a widget-focused tool, it doesn't address broader classic-editor needs some users may also want

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Site owners and developers who want a simple, dependable way to add rich-text formatting to widgets without adopting a full classic editor suite. It's ideal for those who need occasional WYSIWYG control in sidebars or footers and value stability over new features.

Not ideal for

Users needing advanced media interactions (like image rollovers) or a complete classic post-editing experience may find this plugin too narrow in scope and should look at broader classic editor alternatives instead.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The plugin is entirely free and provides full TinyMCE visual editing capability within widgets, covering the core use case for most users without limitations.

Final Verdict

Black Studio TinyMCE Widget earns its strong reputation through simplicity and reliability. With a 4.8/5 rating across 191 reviews, minimal complaints, and zero recorded vulnerabilities, it's a safe, low-risk choice for adding rich text editing to widgets.

While the field of alternatives is large, few match its combination of longevity and consistent positive feedback. It's best suited to users with straightforward widget-formatting needs, though those wanting advanced media features or full classic editor restoration should consider one of the more feature-rich alternatives.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Black Studio TinyMCE Widget plugin.

Visual editor

WordPress widget

WYSIWYG editor

Screenshots

FAQ

This plugin gives you the ability to use the WordPress visual editor (TinyMCE) in widgets as you do in posts and pages, but it doesn’t affect the editor behavior itself or its functionalities. If you are looking for additional editor features, take a look at plugins like WP Edit, TinyMCE Advanced or any other feature specific plugin you may need. Any additional TinyMCE plugin written following WordPress guidelines should work fine with Black Studio TinyMCE Widget.

If you are experiencing issues with the plugin please read entirely these FAQ before posting a new topic in our support forum. Most of the times issues are caused by incompatibility with other plugins or themes, which may prevent our plugin from working as expected. In order to troubleshoot issues please complete the following steps:

First, ensure you have understood the purpose of the plugin. What this plugin does is to give you the ability to use the WordPress visual editor (TinyMCE) in widgets as you do in posts and pages, but it doesn’t alter the editor behavior itself or its functionalities. So if you are experiencing issues with the editor even when editing posts or pages, they’re definitely not related to our plugin (unless you’re using some additional plugins that provide widgets support for pages, i.e. Page Builder).
Ensure that you are running the latest versions of both WordPress and the plugin.
Search in our support forum for threads with similar issues.
Disable all other plugins and check if the problem is fixed. In that case, enable the other plugins one by one and figure out which one is causing the issue. Please see Conflict Diagnosis Guide for WordPress plugins for further info.
If the problem persists even with all other plugins disabled, try to switch to a WordPress default theme (i.e. Twenty Fifteen) and check if that fixes the issue.

If you found a conflict with a plugin or theme, or if your problem is still present after the steps above, open a topic in the support forum and provide the following information:

Detailed description of the problem, including the steps to reproduce it
Location(s) where the problem occurs (Appearance -> Widgets, Theme Customizer, Accessibility mode, Page Builder, etc)
Error messages, if any, in particular in browser’s javascript console
Browser and Operating System in use
Plugin version in use
WordPress version in use
WordPress theme in use
WordPress language in use, if other than English
WordPress plugins causing conflicts, if any
A link to a screenshot, if it can be useful to understand the problem
A link to your website, if it can be useful to show the problem

The appearance of widgets in the frontend depends on both CSS and HTML. This plugin does not insert any additional CSS to your website frontend, so if you need to customize the styling you’ll have to do at theme level, or you have to insert explicitly insert <style> in your widget using the Text / HTML mode (this option is not recommended though).
As for the HTML, most of the markup is controlled by WordPress and by the theme.
The HTML output of a widget includes the following parts:

{before_widget}     {before_title}         {title}     {after_title}     {before_text}         {text}     {after_text} {after_widget}

which can be customized as following:

The {title} and {text} are the values that you insert in Widgets administration panel.
The markup of {before_widget}, {after_widget}, {before_title}, {after_title} is usually defined by your theme when registering a sidebar with the register_sidebar function.
The {before_text} and {after_text} are the only piece of HTML markup added by the plugin. The default markup is the same as native WordPress text widgets to ensure visual compatibility with styles created for text widgets: <div class="textwidget"> {text} </div>. You may customize the markup using the black_studio_tinymce_before_text and black_studio_tinymce_after_text filter hooks. They both take two parameters, the first is the default text and the second is the widget instance. See examples below.

Example 1: Custom markup for {before_text} and {after_text}

add_filter( 'black_studio_tinymce_before_text', 'my_widget_before_text', 10, 2 ); function my_widget_before_text( $before_text, $instance ) {     return '<div class="mytextwidget">'; } add_filter( 'black_studio_tinymce_after_text', 'my_widget_after_text', 10, 2 ); function my_widget_after_text( $after_text, $instance ) {     return '</div>'; }

Example 2: Totally remove markup for [before_text] and [after_text]

add_filter( 'black_studio_tinymce_before_text', '__return_empty_string' ); add_filter( 'black_studio_tinymce_after_text', '__return_empty_string' );

There’s also an additional hook, that you may use to specify to not display widgets if their content is empty:

add_filter( 'black_studio_tinymce_hide_empty', '__return_true' );

You may alter widget title and text via code using the widget_title and widget_text filter hooks (see Codex for details).
The plugin also internally uses widget_text filter to apply specific features:

icl_t (priority 2): applies WPML translation (called only if WPML is activated on the site).
autoembed (priority 4): converts embed urls to relevant embed codes.
convert_smilies (priority 6): converts text equivalent of smilies to images.
wpautop (priority 8): applies paragraphs automatically (if the relevant option is selected).
do_shortcode (priority 10): processes the shortcodes.

If for any reason you need to remove the filters above, you may use the following code snippet (or a custom version of it):

add_action( 'init', 'remove_bstw_widget_text_filters' ); function remove_bstw_widget_text_filters() {     if ( function_exists( 'bstw' ) ) {         remove_filter( 'widget_text', array( bstw()->compatibility()->plugins(), 'wpml_widget_text' ), 2 );         remove_filter( 'widget_text', array( bstw()->text_filters(), 'autoembed' ), 4 );         remove_filter( 'widget_text', array( bstw()->text_filters(), 'convert_smilies' ), 6 );         remove_filter( 'widget_text', array( bstw()->text_filters(), 'wpautop' ), 8 );         remove_filter( 'widget_text', array( bstw()->text_filters(), 'do_shortcode' ), 10 );     } }

The widgets data are stored in serialized format inside a record in the wp_options table having option_name = 'widget_black-studio-tinymce'. Widget data storage is handled by WordPress and not directly by the plugin. The widgets data are intentionally kept in the database upon plugin deactivation/deletion to avoid content loss. Additionally, the plugin may save some user preferences in the wp_usermeta table, in particular, the records having s key with the prefix _bstw.
If you want to totally remove the plugin including its data, just uninstall it and then remove the above records from the database.
You may use the following SQL queries for removal (Note: adjust table prefix according to your database settings):

DELETE FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = 'widget_black-studio-tinymce'; DELETE FROM wp_usermeta WHERE meta_key LIKE '_bstw%';

Contributors and developers

“Black Studio TinyMCE Widget” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Black Studio

Marco Chiesi

Francesco Canovi

Free Version Docs

WPS

7.37

Very Good

Ratings

4.8 out of 5 | 191

Version

2.7.4

Last updated

1 month ago

Active installations

200,000+

WordPress version

7.1.3 or higher

PHP version

5.2 or higher

Languages

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Black Studio TinyMCE Widget Review - In-Depth Analysis

Performance Overview

What It Does

Comparing to Alternatives

User Sentiment Analysis

Who Should Use This?

Pricing & Value

Final Verdict

Other Notable Features

Screenshots

FAQ

Contributors and developers

Ratings

Reviews (191)

Sort by:

Contributors & Developers

Interested in development?

Changelog

Security Status

Secure

No Unpatched Vulnerabilities

Known Vulnerabilities (0)

Previous Versions

WPS

7.37

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Classic Text Widget

Note – A live edit text widget

Preserved HTML Editor Markup