Maestro: The Inline Admin Menu Editor

Maestro lets you orchestrate the appearance of the WordPress admin menu. Instead of a separate settings screen, Maestro turns the admin menu into something you edit in place — right where it lives. Toggle Edit Menu from the admin bar, and the menu becomes editable. Click a menu item to rename it, hide it from selected user roles, or change its icon. Drag submenu items and whole menu groups to reorder them. Try Maestro right here. Launch a disposable demo in WordPress Playground — it boots a site with Maestro active, User Switching, and test users (editor, author, contributor, subscriber; password password) so you can try per-role visibility by switching to another user's account. What you can do — as a site administrator Maestro's enhancements are only activated for logged-in users with an Administrator role. They can:

• Rename any top-level or submenu item — just click the label.
• Reorder items by dragging (top-level items among themselves, submenu items within their parent), or with the keyboard (Alt+Arrow).
• Swap icons on top-level items. The icon picker offers Dashicons and bundled Bootstrap Icons with search. It accepts any of WordPress's four native icon forms (dashicon, "none", base64 image data-URI, or an image URL).
• Hide items from chosen roles — including administrators. Custom roles registered by other plugins (User Role Editor, Members, etc.) appear automatically.
• Reset a single item to its WordPress default, or reset everything at once.

Changes are global — one configuration applies to everyone. Your custom menu configuration is stored as a sparse delta (just the differences) layered over the menu WordPress builds on each load. Nothing is rebuilt or duplicated, so a reset simply removes the delta, and the original menu returns. Important: visibility is cosmetic, not access control Hiding a menu item only declutters the menu. The underlying admin page still loads for anyone who knows or types its URL if they're authorized to see it. That's because a page's own registered capability is the true lock. Maestro operates on the menu (presentation), which is a different plane from authorization. If you need to actually prevent access, pair Maestro with a capability manager like PublishPress Capabilities**. It's menu-aware, and its Pro tier can block admin pages by URL. The maestro_capability filter lets such a plugin hand editing rights to a custom capability instead of the default manage_options. Accessibility and localization The editor is keyboard-operable end to end — select with Enter/Space, reorder with Alt+Arrow, and every move and save is announced to screen readers. Modified items carry a non-color indicator with screen-reader text, so their state is never indicated by color alone. Maestro uses the maestro-menu-editor text domain and 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). WordPress.org language packs override and extend these; native-speaker and WordPress Polyglots reviews are welcome.

1.2.0

• Redesigned edit-mode toolbar: every control is now a compact icon button in one consistent system, with colour signalling meaning — green for editing/saved, amber for unsaved changes, red for Reset All. Fully accessible: each control keeps its name for screen readers and shows a tooltip on hover.
• Mobile: the editor is reachable on phones now — the admin-bar "Edit Menu" toggle stays visible at small screen widths (it was hidden before), and the toolbar and controls are sized for touch.
• "Edit Mode" indicator: a persistent, glanceable cue that you're editing, plus a one-time first-run hint highlighting the menu.
• Rename: the field shows a placeholder label, and the transient "Saved" confirmation now clears itself after a moment so the toolbar stays quiet.
• Reorder: keyboard (Alt+Arrow) and the new ▲/▼ buttons leave menu separators in place; the per-item Reset button is disabled when there's nothing to undo.
• Robustness: Maestro engages WordPress's menu-order machinery only when you've actually reordered top-level items (otherwise it stays out of other plugins' way); the stored configuration is size-bounded; and concurrent save / reset / exit actions are race-safe.
• Fix: the "modified" indicator now sits on the changed row's label for items that have submenus.

1.1.1

• Editor: the selected item's name is now screen-reader-only — the visible breadcrumb duplicated the rename field and ate horizontal space, and the controls are self-explanatory. Screen-reader users still get the item/submenu context.
• Editor: shorter reset button labels — "Reset Item" and "Reset All".

1.1.0

• Keyboard reordering: select a menu item, then press Alt+ArrowUp / Alt+ArrowDown to move it. Each move is announced to screen readers (politely for success, assertively when already at the boundary). No mouse required.
• Modified indicator: changed items show a non-color glyph (•) with screen-reader text "(modified)" in edit mode. The indicator refreshes live on every rename, icon change, visibility change, and reset.
• Discoverable per-item reset: the Reset this item button in the controls panel is now keyboard-reachable (Tab + Enter/Space) and is visually emphasised whenever the selected item has unsaved overrides.
• Solid bundled icons: the Bootstrap Icons set now uses solid (*-fill) variants, so it mixes naturally with WordPress's dashicons in the picker.
• Edit-mode polish: clearer toolbar grouping, a more scannable icon grid, and a dismissible first-run hint.
• Native save status: the saving / saved / error states now use WordPress dashicons (a spinner, a check, a warning) instead of emoji glyphs that some platforms recoloured or dropped; the idle state shows no icon.
• Fixes: the saved status no longer renders a double check mark; the rename field no longer shifts as the title length changes; toolbar controls wrap instead of overlapping on narrow screens.
• Listing: rewritten description and FAQ, plus a "Try it first" link to a live WordPress Playground demo.

1.0.0

• Initial release: rename, reorder, per-role visibility, reset.
• Icons: accepts all four native WordPress forms (dashicon, none, base64 image data-URI, image URL); picker bundles dashicons + curated Bootstrap Icons with search, keyboard accessibility, and mobile-sized touch targets.
• Editor: click-to-select with a shared panel, debounced single-flight autosave, and folded-mode neutralization.