What we’ll see in WooCommerce 4.1 – Stability and Performance

05.05.2020 Update: WooCommerce 4.1 is available. See WooCommerce 4.1 Changelog.

With WooCommerce 4.0 now comfortably behind us, it’s time for WooCommerce to begin their next release cycle. WooCommerce 4.1 is available for beta testing. You can either download it directly from WordPress.org or install with the WooCommerce Beta Tester Plugin.

What’s new in WooCommerce 4.1?

WooCommerce 4.1 (beta) is a minor release and is about stability and performance. If you’d like to dig into the details, take a moment to review the changelog for a more granular breakdown of everything included.

WooCommerce 4.1 Changelog

== Changelog ==
= 4.1.0 – 2020-05-05 =
WooCommerce 4.1

• Enhancement – Update dependency woocommerce/woocommerce-admin to v1.1.0 #26057
• Enhancement – Updated jetpack-autoloader to 1.6 and woocommerce-blocks to 2.5.16. #26099
• Enhancement – Added option to ignore discounts from cart’s total amount to enable free shipping. #24776
• Enhancement – Changed show password icon color to a darker grey hue. #25625
• Enhancement – Use new Setup Wizard for all users. #26016
• Tweak – Show notice for WP min version to WP 5.2. #26094
• Tweak – Improve the string for untested WooCommerce extensions in the system status page to avoid confusion. #25904
• Tweak – Updated KZT (₸) symbol. #25609
• Tweak – Trim whitespaces and strip slashes from MaxMind License Key. #25466
• Tweak – Updated “Help” tabs documentation. #25826
• Tweak – Update serbian currency symbol to рсд from дин. #25885
• Fix – Password visibility toggle to hide password again from text. #25627
• Fix – Undefined property error when attempting to modify the coupon post meta. #25755
• Fix – Remove some of the individual rounding logic to make sure we round at certain places only. #25800
• Fix – Order totals calculation if the order contains taxable and non-taxable products and percentage coupons. #25092
• Fix – Wording for cancelled order email. #25316
• Fix – Removed guided tour videos link on setup wizard (since current link only redirects to the docs). #25823
• Fix – Add RTL style to the onboarding wizard. #25835
• Fix – Trigger change and set val to qty on the frontend so that it properly updates event handlers. #25903
• Fix – Corrected the way percent coupons apply remainders across the order. #25943
• Fix – Clarified the error messaging for WooCommerce.com package update failures. #26034
• Fix – Enforce per user usage limit check for a coupon on guest users based on email. #26066
• Fix – Remove elements with style=display:none explicitly to address a regression causing broken email html. #26075
• Dev – Added woocommerce_can_restock_refunded_items filter. #25728
• Dev – Added woocommerce_order_get_tax_location filter. #25727
• Dev – Updated stock handling to prevent race conditions when orders come in at the same time. #25708
• Dev – Updated /myaccount/form-login.php to use consistent kebab-case class names for woocommerce-form-row. #25668
• Dev – Add filter woocommerce_product_upsells_products_heading to allow heading modification without having to override the template file. #25628
• Dev – Added woocommerce_order_get_tax_location filter. #25727
• Dev – Added the get_woocommerce_currency_symbols function to allow develops to get an array of all the currency symbol registered with WooCommerce. #25733
• Dev – Changed string typed label_class to array in checkout fields.
• Dev – Added “woocommerce_emogrifier” action before the content of the emails is “emogrified”. #25801
• Dev – Add Ability to Filter Event Props. #25851
• Dev – Updated the unit test install script to support paths to MySQL sockets that contain spaces. #25923
• Dev – Made the default test source folders support the system tmp folder. #25923
• Dev – Add cart & checkout block/shortcode info to tracker data. #25932
• Dev – Make WC_Product_Data_Store_CPT::update_product_stock operations atomic. #26039
• Dev – Adds usage data for the of cart & checkout blocks (currently in development in WooCommmerce Blocks plugin) to the WC Tracker snapshot. #26084
• Dev – Implement some additional tracks for coupons, orders, and products. #26085

New Setup Wizard

This release will have new setup wizard. All new shops will be directed through this new setup flow.

WooCommerce 4.1 Database Update

This release requires a database update, as they’ve added a new table to the WooCommerce database structure. This table is critical to processing orders and checkout and is installed automatically after updating.

Nudge for WordPress Version

Note that there is no change in the minimum requirements for this version.

However, sites not currently running on WordPress 5.2 will see a notification to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Why?

In WooCommerce 4.2, the next release, the minimum version of WordPress will be updated to 5.2 (now 5.0) to keep up with changes in the WordPress ecosystem.

New Hooks and Functions

We’ve added several new hooks and functions in this release:

Function	Description
get_woocommerce_currency_symbols()	Returns an array of all registered currency symbols

Action	Triggered
woocommerce_emogrifier	Before an email is run through emogrifier

Filter	Description
woocommerce_can_restock_refunded_items	Prevents stock from being increased by refunds
woocommerce_order_get_tax_location	Enables filtering of the location that an order should be taxed for
woocommerce_product_upsells_products_heading	Allows for filtering of the heading text for product upsells

Template File Changes

The following template file has been updated:

File	Changes
emails/admin-cancelled-order.php	Wording of this notice

Release Schedule

Here are the targets for WooCommerce 4.1 release cycle:

Version	Release
Beta	April 7th
Release Candidate	April 21st
4.1 Release	May 5th