Maestro edits the WordPress admin menu in place. It stores global, cosmetic menu customizations as a sparse delta over the menu WordPress already builds.
After activating the plugin, open any admin page and choose Edit Menu in the admin bar. The admin menu stays expanded while editing so the available items are visible and stable.
Choose Exit Menu Editing when you are done. If an autosave is pending, the plugin finishes it before reloading the page.
Click a top-level or submenu item to select it. A shared controls panel opens for the selected item.
Keyboard users can focus a menu item and press Enter or Space to select it.
Once selected, focus moves into the controls panel.
Select an item and edit its label in the controls panel. Press Enter to commit
the new label, or Escape to restore the previous label.
Renames are saved automatically after a short pause. The status indicator shows when a save is in progress and when it has finished.
Drag menu rows to reorder them.
Top-level items can be reordered among other top-level items. Submenu items can be reordered within their current parent menu. Moving items between top-level and submenu positions is not included in this version.
You can reorder without a mouse:
- Select an item by clicking it or pressing
Enter/Spaceon its row. - Bring focus back to the menu row anchor (press
Shift+Tabfrom the rename field, or click the row). - Press
Alt+ArrowUporAlt+ArrowDownto move the item one position. - Listen for the position announcement ("Posts moved down, position 3 of 8"). Pressing the shortcut again moves the item further; focus stays on the row so you can chain multiple presses.
- If the item is already at the top or bottom, you will hear an assertive announcement ("Posts is already last") and the order will not change.
The shortcut is also exposed as aria-keyshortcuts on the selected row, so
screen readers that surface shortcut metadata can discover it automatically.
Changes are autosaved after each move.
Top-level menu items can use custom icons. Select a top-level item and open the icon picker.
The picker includes all 342 Dashicons, 437 bundled Bootstrap Icons, search, and a No icon option. Both sets show in square, single-colour cells, and the Bootstrap set is grouped by admin topic, so a search for a word like "shop" or "users" finds related icons. The Bootstrap set loads the first time you open its tab. The picker opens on the tab of the item's current icon.
On WordPress 7.1 and later, a third WordPress tab lists the icons registered with WordPress's icon library: core's own set, plus any icons other plugins register. Plugin icons show their collection's name in the tooltip. A chosen icon is saved with the menu, so it keeps showing if the plugin that registered it is removed.
A Bootstrap or other SVG icon takes the menu's colours, like a Dashicon: grey at rest, the hover colour under the pointer and the current-item colour, in every admin colour scheme.
The saved icon value is validated server-side and may use any native WordPress icon form:
- a Dashicon class
none- a base64 image data URI
- an image URL
Submenu items do not have separate WordPress admin menu icons, so the icon control appears only for top-level items.
Select an item and open the visibility control. Check the roles that should not see the selected item in the admin menu.
Visibility settings are global. If an item is hidden from the Author role, it is hidden from all Author users. Custom roles registered by other plugins appear in the same control.
To check what a role still sees, open Preview as using the screen button in the editor toolbar, choose a role, then press Preview. Changing the selection alone does not start a preview. Maestro saves anything still pending first; if the save fails, the preview does not open.
On desktop, Visibility groups and menu width save changes automatically. Use the close icon or Escape to dismiss them; closing does not cancel queued saves. Preview uses the same close icon; closing it leaves you in edit mode. Its role selector stays labelled for assistive technology without repeating the heading. Adding a new group still requires Add group. Save feedback appears above the toolbar, and a failed save remains visible until a successful retry. Its × hides the message without clearing the failure: your next change retries the save and shows the message again if it still fails, and Preview stays unavailable until a save succeeds.
The Dashboard then shows the menu that role gets, with your rules for that role applied, under a "Previewing menu as Editor — read-only" banner. Use the banner's picker to try another role, and Exit preview (in the banner or the WordPress toolbar) to go back to editing. Nothing can be changed or saved while previewing, and you stay signed in as yourself.
The preview is an approximation. It narrows your own capabilities to the role's while the menu is built, then hands them back, so the page itself still opens as you. It does not show:
- rules for specific people or Visibility groups;
- capabilities given to an individual user rather than to their role;
- people who hold more than one role;
- plugins that build their menu from the user's ID rather than capabilities.
The preview runs on the Dashboard only, and only for roles that can reach the
admin (read). Network super admins on multisite cannot preview: WordPress
grants them every capability before any filter can narrow it. Use a site
administrator account to preview that site's roles.
Plugins that suppress all WordPress admin notices can also hide the preview banner and its picker. Exit preview remains available in the WordPress toolbar to return to the ordinary menu.
The toolbar uses touch-sized controls in portrait and landscape. Tapping a menu item selects it without opening the keyboard; tap its name field to rename it. Tapping another item saves the name you typed. While you type a name, the toolbar stays above the on-screen keyboard. Tablets and touch screens behave the same way when you tap; a mouse click or the keyboard still goes straight to the name field.
Visibility, the icon picker, Preview and Visibility groups open in dialogs that fit their content and scroll when needed. Use the header close icon to dismiss them; tapping the page behind leaves them open. Opening a dialog by touch focuses Close instead of a text field, and so does adding or removing a group or person. Tap a search or name field when ready to type. The header stays outside the scrolling body as the dialog follows the space above the keyboard. Width-only Menu width controls appear only at desktop widths.
Role visibility only declutters the menu. It does not prevent access to the underlying admin page.
WordPress protects admin pages with capabilities registered by WordPress core, themes, and plugins. If a user has the required capability and knows the URL, that page can still load even when its menu item is hidden.
For real access control, pair Maestro with a capability manager such as User Role Editor or PublishPress Capabilities.
Renaming creates its own problem: WordPress's admin menu is 160px wide, so a longer label wraps onto two lines. Maestro can widen the menu to fit.
- Drag the menu's edge. In edit mode, a handle runs down the right edge of the menu. Drag it and the menu resizes under your pointer.
- Or set an exact width. Choose Settings (the gear in the toolbar's right zone) and use the Menu width slider or number field. The menu previews each change as you make it.
- With the keyboard, focus the edge handle and use the arrow keys (
Shiftfor bigger steps,Homefor the WordPress default,Endfor the widest setting), or use the slider and number field in Settings.
The width is a global setting, like everything else in Maestro: it applies on every admin page, for everyone, not only while you are editing. It goes from 160px (the WordPress default) to 320px and applies on screens 961px and wider. Below that, WordPress folds the menu to icons or turns it into an overlay, and the width does not apply, so the edge handle and width fields are not shown there. Folding still works at any width.
If another plugin already sets the menu width, that plugin wins. Settings tells you when this happens, so a value that has no effect never looks like it does.
To go back to WordPress's width, choose Use default in Settings. Reset this item never changes the width. Reset all does, because it returns everything to WordPress's defaults.
Maestro is translation-ready with the maestro text
domain. The plugin ships a translation template plus starter language packs for
Spanish (es_ES), German (de_DE), Japanese (ja), French (fr_FR),
Portuguese (Brazil) (pt_BR), and Italian (it_IT). These catalogs cover the
admin-bar toggle, editor buttons, picker labels, save status messages, and reset
prompts. WordPress.org language packs can still override and extend the bundled
translations; native-speaker and WordPress Polyglots review is welcome.
In edit mode, any item that differs from its WordPress default shows a small bullet indicator (•) on its row. The indicator uses a visible glyph plus screen-reader text, so it is perceivable without relying on color alone.
The indicator refreshes live as you make and undo changes: it appears the moment you commit a rename, change an icon, or toggle a visibility role, and it disappears when you reset that item.
Use Reset this item in the controls panel to remove customizations for the currently selected item. The button is visible whenever an item is selected and is highlighted when the item has been modified.
To reset with the keyboard: select the item, then Tab to the Reset this
item button and press Enter or Space. The modified indicator will clear
and the item's overrides will be removed from the saved configuration.
Use Reset all to delete the saved Maestro configuration and return the menu to the defaults generated by WordPress and active plugins.
Because the plugin stores sparse deltas instead of a rebuilt menu, reset is safe: when the saved option is removed, the natural menu returns automatically.
On phones, the toolbar uses up to two rows in portrait and one row in short
landscape viewports. Swipe the item tools sideways if they do not all fit; touch
targets remain full size. Coach tips are available from the ? button on larger
screens. Tap another tool to switch dialogs. The open tool has a coloured
background while its icon keeps its usual colour.
Dialogs share button shapes and keyboard focus indicators. Opening one by touch keeps the keyboard closed; tap a text field when you want to type.
Open Settings (the gear in Edit Menu), then Export/import. Export
waits for pending saves and downloads maestro-menu-config.json. The file
contains names, icons, role visibility rules, menu ordering, separators and
menu width. It leaves out rules for individual people and all visibility
groups, including their names, memberships and assignments.
On the destination site, choose the JSON file and press Review file. Review lists menu references and roles that cannot be applied. Nothing is imported until you press Import configuration. Import replaces the site's portable settings; it preserves that site's existing people rules and visibility groups. An empty result requires an additional Reset portable settings confirmation. Hiding remains cosmetic and does not change page access.
Menus or roles missing on the destination are dropped and reported. The dialog previews up to 50 entries; Download full report saves every entry, including its reason code, as a JSON file. Imports use the destination's actual Dashboard menu registrations, before Maestro hides anything. A plugin that registers different menus on different screens may need checking on the destination. Plugins, roles or settings changed since review require a fresh review. Canceling or rejecting a file changes nothing.
The file format has its own version, separate from Maestro's stored config schema. Unsupported versions, malformed files, ambiguous keys and files over 2 MB are refused. An older stored configuration must be saved in the current editor before export. Imported data also obeys Maestro's normal storage limits. Image URLs are carried as URLs: an icon hosted on the source site still needs that image to be reachable. Import does not upload or copy media.
After import, the editor reloads from saved settings and shows a success notice. If you cancel the reload, editing stays locked to protect the imported settings. Use Reload editor to continue with the saved configuration.
Export/import is a desktop task: like the menu width, Settings shows only on screens 961px and wider. Named presets and starter configurations are not included.