All-in-one Syntax Highlighting solution. Full Gutenberg and Classic Editor integration. Graphical theme customizer. Based on EnlighterJS.
As of April 2026, Enlighter is a WordPress highlighter plugin with 10K+ active installations and a 4.8/5 rating from 65 reviews. It has been downloaded 345K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 6.0+ and PHP 5.6+. Available on WordPress.org since 2013. Last updated 3 years ago — may have compatibility concerns. Downloads are down 6% this week. Top alternative: Code Block Pro – Beautiful Syntax….
Enlighter is a free, easy-to-use, syntax highlighting tool for WordPress. Highlighting is powered by the EnlighterJS javascript library to provide a beautiful code-appearance.
Using it can be as simple as adding a new Enlighter Sourcecode block (Gutenberg) and insert the code which you want to highlight: Enlighter takes care of the rest!
An easy to use Theme-Customizer is included to modify the build-in themes without any css knowlegde!
It also supports the automatic creation of tab-panes to display code-groups together (useful for multi-language examples – e.g. html+css+js)
I have been using the “Enlighter – Customizable Syntax Highlighter” plugin for an extended period, and it has consistently impressed me with its functionality and user-friendliness.
Moreover, the real game-changer for us was the ability to develop an extension of the plugin called “Enlighter – Extension With Run Button.” This extension added a unique and invaluable feature to our code blocks – a “Run” button. Now, not only can we showcase our code snippets beautifully, but we can also execute them directly on our website, making it an incredibly powerful tool for educational purposes and demonstrations.
I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the developers and maintainers of the Enlighter plugin for their dedication to providing such a fantastic tool to the coding community. This plugin has not only improved the overall aesthetics of our website but has also enhanced the user experience for our visitors.
Enlighter is an amazing plugin that makes it easy to add beautiful, customizable syntax highlighting to your WordPress site. It’s incredibly simple to use, and the results are stunning. The plugin has a wide range of options for customizing the look and feel of code blocks, from the language highlighting to the font and color settings. It also has an intuitive user interface that makes it easy to make changes quickly. I’ve been using Enlighter for a year, and it’s been a great addition to my WordPress site. Highly recommended!
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This is an excellent code highlighter, which allows full blocks of code or inline code snippets to be highlighted. It works well with the WordPress Ennova theme up to PHP 7.4.
My only minor complaint is that there doesn’t seem to be any way of setting the default language (e.g. Python) to be highlighted, so that every time some code is inserted or an inline snippet is selected, the language must be selected again from a drop-down menu. Since I’d imagine most users would work in the same language for a while, a default setting would be very useful.
Other than that, I would recommend it highly.
| WordPress | 6.0+ requiredTested up to 6.1.10 |
| PHP | 5.6+ required |
pre wrapper introduced in v4.6.0 caused wpautop to handle inline code as block element which breaks the layout. Affects inline codeblocks of markdown codeblocks and shortcodes. Gutenberg/TinyMCE editors were not affected – thanks to the community on GitHubv3.6.0Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.