Creating Custom Synced & Non-Synced Block Patterns

If you find yourself rebuilding the same layout on several pages — a particular banner, a contact box, a warning notice — you can save it as your own pattern instead of recreating it each time. WordPress gives you two types: synced and non-synced. This page explains the difference and walks through creating both.

Note: creating and managing patterns requires Editor or Administrator access. If you can’t see the options below, you may be on a Contributor or Author account — get in touch and we can either upgrade your role or create the pattern for you.

Synced vs non-synced: what’s the difference?

Non-synced patterns are a copy-and-paste layout. Once inserted onto a page, that copy is independent — editing it only changes that one page. This is what you want for layouts that follow the same design but need different content each time, like a page banner or a feature section.

Synced patterns (previously called “reusable blocks”) are linked. Insert the same synced pattern on five pages, and editing it on any one of them updates all five instantly. This is what you want for content that should always say exactly the same thing everywhere it appears — a safeguarding contact box, a standard disclaimer, a shared “get in touch” footer block.

As a rule of thumb: if you’d want a future edit to apply everywhere at once, make it synced. If every instance should be free to diverge, make it non-synced.

Creating a pattern from existing blocks

Both pattern types start the same way — by building the layout first as normal blocks, then saving it as a pattern.

1. Build the layout on your page using ordinary blocks — headings, paragraphs, columns, images, buttons, whatever you need.
2. Select all of the blocks that make up the layout. Click the first block, then hold Shift and click the last one, or drag to select across them.
3. With the group selected, click the three-dot (Options) menu in the toolbar above the selection.
4. Choose Create pattern.
5. Give it a clear, descriptive name — something another editor would recognise, e.g. “Safeguarding Contact Box” rather than “Pattern 1”.
6. Tick Synced if you want a linked pattern, or leave it unticked for a standard, independent one.
7. Click Create. The blocks on your page are now saved as a pattern and will appear in the inserter under the Patterns tab, in a category called My patterns (synced) or alongside your other saved patterns.

Using your pattern elsewhere

Open the block inserter on any page, go to the Patterns tab, and find it under My patterns. Click to insert it, exactly as with the built-in patterns covered in the previous article.

For a synced pattern, you’ll notice it’s outlined slightly differently when selected on the page, and editing any text inside it shows a small sync icon — a reminder that changes will apply everywhere. For a non-synced pattern, once inserted it behaves as fully independent blocks, same as before.

Editing a synced pattern

Click into the text or image on any page where the synced pattern appears and make your change as normal. There’s no separate “save” step for the pattern itself — as soon as you update and publish the page you’re on, the change is pushed out to every other page using that pattern too.

Because of that, it’s worth pausing before editing a synced pattern to check where else it’s used, especially for anything containing dates, names, or figures — a change intended for one page will land everywhere.

Managing, renaming, and deleting patterns

1. Go to the site editor: Appearance > Editor, then choose Patterns from the left-hand navigation (on some setups this is under Tools > Patterns).
2. You’ll see all your saved patterns listed, with a marker showing which are synced.
3. Click a pattern to open and edit it directly in this view — useful for synced patterns you want to update without going to find a page that uses it.
4. Use the three-dot menu next to a pattern to Rename or Delete it.

Deleting a synced pattern removes it from every page it appears on, leaving a gap where it was — so double check it’s not still in use before deleting. Deleting a non-synced pattern only removes it from the library; any existing copies already placed on pages are untouched, since those were independent from the moment they were inserted.

Tips

• Name patterns clearly and consistently, e.g. prefix with the page type: “Banner — Events”, “Box — Safeguarding Contact”.
• Use synced patterns sparingly and deliberately — for content that genuinely must stay identical everywhere, such as legal wording or shared contact details.
• If you’re not sure whether something should be synced, start non-synced. It’s straightforward to build a synced version later; un-syncing something that’s already spread across many pages is more fiddly.
• Review your pattern library occasionally via Appearance > Editor > Patterns and remove ones that are no longer used, to keep the inserter easy to navigate for other editors.