Site Editor: Show the inserter for an empty Navigation Menu in the sidebar

[jeryj]

What?

Shows the list view and its appender in the site editor sidebar for an empty Navigation Menu, instead of only "This Navigation Menu is empty."

Why?

That empty screen came from #50870, when the sidebar was read-only. The sidebar is editable now, so the early return just leaves empty menus with no way to add a first item.

How?

Removes the early return so empty menus render like any other menu. The extensible site editor never had it. The new tests run against both editors in CI.

Testing Instructions

1. With a block theme active (for example, Twenty Twenty-Five), go to Appearance > Editor.
2. Open a template or template part that contains a Navigation block, such as the Header, and select the Navigation block.
3. In the block settings sidebar, open the "Choose or create a Navigation Menu" (⋮) dropdown and choose "Create new Menu".
4. Save the site.
5. Go back to the Site Editor's main sidebar, open Navigation, and select the menu you just created.
6. Confirm the sidebar shows the list view with a + ("Add page") button. On trunk, it only shows "This Navigation Menu is empty."
7. Click +, search for an existing page, and select it.
8. Confirm the page appears in the sidebar as the menu's first item.

Testing Instructions for Keyboard

1. Follow steps 1 to 5 above.
2. Press Tab until the "Add page" button has focus, then press Enter.
3. Confirm focus moves to the link search field, and type the title of an existing page.
4. Press Down Arrow to highlight the matching result, then press Enter.
5. Confirm the page appears in the sidebar as the menu's first item.

Screenshots

Before

After

Use of AI Tools

Claude Code (Claude Opus 5.5) debugged the cause, wrote the tests and fix, and drafted this description. I reviewed the changes.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01FxdL4e4Dpj8Z3h78C5wi8K

[github-actions]

🤖 PR meta 🤖

🎉 Props

If you're merging code through a pull request on GitHub, copy and paste the following into the bottom of the merge commit message.

Co-authored-by: jeryj <jeryj@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: annezazu <annezazu@git.wordpress.org>

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Updated as activity occurs, without notifying anyone named here. Add the props-bot label to refresh.

📦 Bundle size

Size Change: -23 B (0%)

Total Size: 8.25 MB

📦 View Changed

Filename	Size	Change
build/scripts/edit-site/index.min.js	382 kB	-23 B (-0.01%)

_{1572147 Run}

⚡ Performance

Show the results

Client side metrics exclude the server response time.

front-end-block-theme

Metric	fe06944	trunk	% Change
timeToFirstByte	58.65 ms +4.69% -3.24%	58.15 ms +2.84% -3.44%	0.86%
largestContentfulPaint	100 ms +6% -6%	96 ms +8.33% -2.08%	4.17%
lcpMinusTtfb	37.35 ms +16.33% -3.35%	37.7 ms +19.23% -9.81%	-0.93%
wpBeforeTemplate	28.21 ms +9.54% -0.39%	28.66 ms +7.75% -4.08%	-1.57%
wpTemplate	25.4 ms +6.93% -2.64%	24.89 ms +3.74% -4.18%	2.05%
wpTotal	54.62 ms +4.71% -3.57%	54.18 ms +2.62% -3.62%	0.81%
wpMemoryUsage	7.62 MB +0% -0%	7.59 MB +0% -0%	0.46%
wpDbQueries	17 +0% -0%	17 +0% -0%	0%

front-end-classic-theme

Metric	fe06944	trunk	% Change
timeToFirstByte	47.9 ms +5.74% -2.09%	43.35 ms +6% -3.11%	10.5%
largestContentfulPaint	104 ms +5.77% -0%	92 ms +4.35% -0%	13.04%
lcpMinusTtfb	57.1 ms +1.4% -0.7%	49.9 ms +1.3% -2.51%	14.43%
wpBeforeTemplate	24.95 ms +13.19% -1.04%	25.36 ms +5.64% -3.59%	-1.62%
wpTemplate	19.06 ms +3.83% -1.99%	14.71 ms +2.65% -2.52%	29.57%
wpTotal	44.51 ms +5.39% -2.2%	40.28 ms +6.01% -3.45%	10.5%
wpMemoryUsage	6.25 MB +0% -0%	6.07 MB +0% -0%	2.92%
wpDbQueries	14 +0% -0%	10 +0% -0%	40%

media-processing

Metric	fe06944	trunk	% Change
mediaProcessingJpeg	415.77 ms +1.19% -0.99%	412.55 ms +1.57% -0.24%	0.78%
mediaProcessingAvif	6172.23 ms +0.24% -0.2%	6189.32 ms +0.49% -0.11%	-0.28%
mediaProcessingJpegToAvif	4331.91 ms +0.28% -0.06%	4327.24 ms +0.04% -0.16%	0.11%

media-upload

Metric	fe06944	trunk	% Change
jpegUploadProcessing	1448.99 ms +34.21% -1.76%	1445.73 ms +0.8% -1.22%	0.23%
pngUploadProcessing	211.67 ms +5.42% -16.55%	223.64 ms +4.41% -15.1%	-5.35%
largeJpegUploadProcessing	1418.16 ms +0.89% -0.58%	1426.38 ms +0.97% -1.09%	-0.58%
multipleImageUploadProcessing	1585.92 ms +2.92% -1.35%	1588.66 ms +32.35% -1.5%	-0.17%

post-editor

Metric	fe06944	trunk	% Change
serverResponse	326.9 ms +3.58% -7.77%	331.36 ms +2.97% -7.6%	-1.35%
firstPaint	182.81 ms +8.92% -19.54%	175.22 ms +20.47% -15.52%	4.33%
domContentLoaded	862.85 ms +2.58% -2.62%	853.26 ms +0.48% -1.93%	1.12%
loaded	863.97 ms +2.57% -2.64%	854.35 ms +0.49% -1.92%	1.13%
firstContentfulPaint	360 ms +5.57% -8.94%	356.76 ms +0.88% -1.98%	0.91%
firstBlock	2488.34 ms +1.6% -0.52%	2487.64 ms +1.53% -1.33%	0.03%
type	15.89 ms +10.45% -5.79%	15.98 ms +1.69% -3.44%	-0.56%
typeWithoutInspector	15.57 ms +1.22% -2.83%	15.43 ms +4.02% -1.23%	0.91%
typeWithTopToolbar	19.79 ms +3.79% -3.84%	18.65 ms +9.28% -3.86%	6.11%
typeContainer	7.02 ms +10.83% -8.12%	6.77 ms +12.41% -3.84%	3.69%
focus	59.01 ms +1.3% -4.15%	56.6 ms +4.19% -2.72%	4.26%
firstFocus	167.66 ms +0% -0%	179.36 ms +0% -0%	-6.52%
selectAll	457.3 ms +1.99% -5.68%	406.94 ms +1.63% -0.12%	12.38%
listViewOpen	46.48 ms +11.66% -9.6%	49.36 ms +8.83% -3.4%	-5.83%
inserterOpen	19.21 ms +8.22% -7.76%	19.43 ms +5.82% -11.94%	-1.13%
inserterHover	1.98 ms +2.02% -8.08%	1.94 ms +9.79% -3.09%	2.06%
inserterSearch	6.62 ms +6.8% -3.47%	7.08 ms +2.54% -8.76%	-6.5%
loadPatterns	524.47 ms +3.49% -5.72%	516.03 ms +3.4% -4.71%	1.64%
wpTotal	317.39 ms +3.95% -7.89%	322.09 ms +3.1% -7.66%	-1.46%
wpMemoryUsage	13.17 MB +0% -0%	13.13 MB +0% -0%	0.28%
wpDbQueries	54 +0% -0%	54 +0% -0%	0%

site-editor

Metric	fe06944	trunk	% Change
serverResponse	424.28 ms +1.4% -8.19%	420.43 ms +2.11% -2.4%	0.92%
firstPaint	273.66 ms +61.65% -15.91%	245.44 ms +11.9% -11.55%	11.5%
domContentLoaded	1075.45 ms +1.11% -1.56%	1095.99 ms +2.18% -1.07%	-1.87%
loaded	1076.55 ms +1.11% -1.56%	1097.14 ms +2.17% -1.06%	-1.88%
firstContentfulPaint	443.11 ms +2.75% -3.92%	431.72 ms +1.57% -1.03%	2.64%
firstBlock	3912.46 ms +1.3% -0.53%	3871.88 ms +1.49% -0.7%	1.05%
type	16.95 ms +11.5% -4.6%	17.05 ms +4.16% -4.93%	-0.59%
navigate	115.42 ms +4.06% -7.42%	115.26 ms +6.13% -12.11%	0.14%
loadPatterns	1334.06 ms +2.24% -3.88%	1333.49 ms +4.18% -3.02%	0.04%
loadPages	1045.78 ms +1.83% -1.43%	1038.9 ms +1.26% -0.75%	0.66%
wpTotal	414.91 ms +1.47% -8.33%	411.26 ms +2.08% -2.58%	0.89%
wpMemoryUsage	12.14 MB +0% -0%	12.09 MB +0% -0%	0.41%
wpDbQueries	43.5 +1.15% -1.15%	43 +2.33% -0%	1.16%

_{1572147 Run}

🏁 Flaky tests

Some tests passed with failed attempts. The failures may not be related to this commit but are still reported for visibility. See the documentation for more information.

should cut and paste individual blocks with collapsed selection in /test/e2e/specs/editor/various/copy-cut-paste.spec.js, passed after 1 failed attempt.

Error: expect(string).toMatchSnapshot(expected) failed

  @@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
   <!-- wp:paragraph -->
  -<p>2Cut - collapsed selection</p>
  +<p>2</p>
   <!-- /wp:paragraph -->


    at /home/runner/work/gutenberg/gutenberg/test/e2e/specs/editor/various/copy-cut-paste.spec.js:45:49

_{1572147 Run}

[annezazu]

I took this for a spin! Nice quality of life improvement. I noticed two minor things:

• I was prompted to save even though I didn't make any changes and just clicked + but didn't add anything.
• When adding pages that didn't exist, when I searched "About" it still showed "Sample Page" but the same thing didn't happen with adding a "Contact" page.
• There is what I think is a new line that's hard to see but that separates the results vs create page and add block. When there aren't any results when searching, it felt a bit janky.

Screen.Recording.2026-10-01.at.2.22.25.PM.mov