What is Press This in WordPress?

Press This is a free, official WordPress plugin that gives you a fast way to quote other web pages on your own site. While you browse, you can grab text, images, or video from the page you're reading and turn it into a new post on your WordPress site without opening your dashboard first.

It works through a browser bookmarklet, a bookmark that runs a small script instead of opening a saved page. Click it while viewing any page and it opens a stripped-down editor pre-filled with the content you selected. From there you can publish the post immediately or save it as a draft.

From core feature to canonical plugin

Press This began as a feature built into the Content Management System (CMS) itself. WordPress has bundled some way to clip snippets from other sites since its earliest days: the original Press It gave way to Press This in version 2.6, and WordPress 4.2 refreshed the tool completely.

WordPress 4.9 (released November 16, 2017) removed Press This from core and re-released it as an official "canonical" plugin maintained by WordPress.org, with the code no longer in core at all. Spinning it out let core shed a niche feature while sites that wanted it could keep it, the same path the Importers took.

Installing and setting up Press This

Setup takes 2 steps:

1. Install and activate Press This from your dashboard under Plugins → Add New. New to plugins? Our plugin installation tutorial walks through it.
2. Go to the Tools page in wp-admin and drag the Press This bookmarklet to your browser's bookmarks bar.

From then on, the loop is simple: select the content you want on any page, click the bookmarklet, compose in the popup, and publish or save the draft for later. Note that the bookmarklet lives on the Tools page, not in the plugin's settings; that's the step that's easiest to miss.

Press This 2.0 and the block editor

Press This works with the modern block editor and is maintained by WordPress.org. As of August 5, 2026, the plugin directory lists version 2.0.2, updated in April 2026 and tested up to WordPress 7.0.2, with 5,000+ active installations. Development continues in the open on GitHub, where a 2.1.0 release followed in July 2026, adding post scheduling and a fix for the bookmarklet on mobile browsers.

Version 2.0 rebuilt the bookmarklet popup on Gutenberg, the WordPress block editor, so you compose clips with Paragraph, Heading, Image, Quote, List, and Embed blocks. It also suggests a post format automatically (Video, Quote, or Link, depending on what you clipped), lets you set any grabbed image as the featured image, and extracts content entirely in your browser for better privacy and security.

Copyright and duplicate content

Someone else's text, images, and video are copyrighted by default, and crediting the source doesn't give you permission to republish it. A link back is good manners, not a license. The safe materials are content you created, content licensed for reuse (Creative Commons, for example), work in the public domain, or anything the owner has given you permission to share.

A short quotation with your own commentary may qualify as fair use, but fair use and similar exceptions depend on context and local law, so there's no universally safe amount to copy. Clipping an image or video usually copies the whole work, which carries different risks from quoting a passage of text. Republishing full articles invites takedown complaints, and it fills your site with duplicate content that search engines may filter out of results.

When to use Press This

Install Press This if you regularly share quotes, links, or commentary on things you read. It turns a multi-step copy-paste job into a single click from browser to draft. If you only quote another site occasionally, skip it; the standard editor covers that fine. Whichever route you take, quote less than you comment so every post adds something of your own.