Manage visual editing for a site

As a Netlify Owner or Developer, learn the basics of managing visual editing for a site using the Netlify visual editor.

Visual Editor availability

Visual Editor is only available for teams that already have it enabled through Netlify Support. For all other teams, the Visual editor dashboard link is hidden from team navigation and the Visual Editor section is hidden from project configuration, so there’s no way to enable visual editing for a new project or team.

If your team already has visual editing enabled, you can keep using it for now and the docs in this section still apply to you. If you’re not sure whether your team has access, contact Support.

Enable visual editing

Once a site has visual editing enabled, you can either test out visual editing if your site is already pre-configured or you can follow the configuration steps to complete the setup.

Enabling visual editing requires the Visual Editor section of project configuration, which is only available for teams that already have Visual Editor. If your team doesn’t have it, you can’t enable visual editing for a project.

As a Developer or Owner on a team with Visual Editor, to enable visual editing for an existing site on Netlify:

1. After a successful deploy of your site, go to your project configuration page in app.netlify and select Enable visual editor.

2. Select Enable visual editor.

From your visual editor settings page, you’ll find the setup walkthrough in the Netlify UI that prompts you for the next steps. Note that you may not need to complete all of these steps, depending on how much your site is already pre-configured for the visual editor.

For additional guidance, check out the visual editor walkthrough help doc.

Find a site with visual editing

To find a site with visual editing enabled, go to your team’s Projects page and select a project with the visual editing icon or the Open in visual editor link.

The visual_editor=true search parameter filters your projects list down to projects with visual editing enabled. For example, https://app.netlify.com/teams/YOUR_TEAM_NAME/projects/?visual_editor=true returns only projects with visual editing enabled.

The Visual editor dashboard link is no longer part of the navigation for your team, so use the projects list to find your sites. Publishers and Internal Builders are still directed to the visual editor dashboard when they log in to Netlify.

Manage access to visual editor

To manage access for the visual editor, you must have certain permissions. Learn more in Editorial permissions.

Open the visual editor

When visual editing is enabled for a site, you can access the visual editor through the following:

1. the navigation after you select a site in the Netlify UI
2. in the project details card

Find the working status of the visual editor

The working status of the visual editor is shown near the project details card in the Netlify app UI. You can also find a status update in the visual editor interface.

Disable visual editing

To turn off Netlify’s visual editor functionality for a site:

1. As a Developer or Owner, go to your project configuration page in app.netlify.

2. Select the Disable the visual editor button and confirm you want to stop visual editing for the site.