XF 2.4 XenForo 2.4 status and what's new under the hood?

Where are we?​

TL;DR: We're working hard to release XenForo 2.4 ASAP, but it's taking longer than expected due to scope changes and strategic decisions to wait for certain upstream developments that will benefit the long-term roadmap. Here's an analogy to explain why:

Software development is like planning a cross-country expedition with multiple destinations.

When you set out for version 2.4, you're not just driving to the next town over. You're charting a course through unknown territory with several strategic stops planned along the way - each representing a major milestone or feature release.

But the challenge is the landscape keeps changing along the journey.

• New roads open up (better technologies emerge)
• Bridges get washed out (dependencies break or become obsolete)
• You discover scenic routes that would benefit all future travellers (opportunities for architectural improvements)
• Weather conditions shift (market demands or user needs evolve)
• Your vehicle needs unexpected maintenance (technical debt must be addressed)

You can't just focus on reaching the immediate next stop. You must consider how each decision affects the entire journey ahead. Taking a shortcut to reach 2.4 faster might leave you stranded when trying to reach 3.0, 4.0 or even 5.0.

This is why scope changes occur: experienced developers are constantly recalibrating the route based on new information, ensuring the expedition can successfully reach not just the next destination, but all the strategic waypoints that follow.

The delays aren't detours, rather they're course corrections that keep the long-term journey viable.

To be slightly less cryptic, these are some of the specific challenges we have faced along the way:

A new Tiptap version is coming​

When we announced that Tiptap is coming to XenForo 2.4 it was 95% complete, and we then took a bit of a pause to work on other projects, which we have talked about since and will be discussing in this thread. Since then, Tiptap have announced Tiptap V3 which is currently in beta. Given how core the editor is to the forum experience, it makes a lot of sense to ship XenForo 2.4 with Tiptap V3 rather than Tiptap V2 as originally planned. While the changes involved are not too extensive, we also don't want to ship 2.4 with a dependency that is still in beta and subject to change. While we are not planning to wait for Tiptap V3 to be stable, necessarily, we do at least want to give it a little bit more time so we have a higher degree of confidence that we're shipping a stable editing experience.

We started talking about a rewrite (again)​

While this is not currently the direction we've decided to go in, it's responsible for us to at least consider all routes available to us to help us reach our destination.

After nearly 8 years since the release of XenForo 2.0, many of the technologies we use are showing their age, many of the decisions we made have started to slow us down more than we would like, and as a framework, XenForo becomes a less productive framework to work with. The solution to this problem can be to start from scratch, but we have ultimately decided that this is not something we need to do at this stage.

Instead, over the next few versions, including 2.4, we will be attempting to make iterative architectural changes to the framework so that we all have greater tools at our disposal to improve both the developer and user experience, particularly focusing on the implementation of developer tools and features that have become commonplace in other frameworks, such as Laravel.

Some of our best features are simply not finished​

There are one or two features that we see requested consistently from customers in our community forums and feedback channels, and we're excited to confirm they are coming in 2.4! However, it serves no one well if we release such highly-anticipated features before they are ready and before they have the usual level of quality, polish, and extensibility you would expect from a XenForo release. We'd rather take the extra time to get them right than rush them out and disappoint users with a subpar implementation that requires immediate patches or lacks the flexibility for customisation. We'll be sharing exciting details about what these features are and how they work in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

We can't keep up!​

I just counted and there are about 15 features that have been merged or are pending to be merged into XF 2.4 that we haven't announced yet. Some of these are smaller and aren't worthy of a dedicated HYS of their own (so they'll probably be rolled into a "miscellaneous" HYS or two), and some of these are going to be mentioned below, but while we have been "cooking" (as the kids say these days) it has meant that things like code reviews, and writing HYS posts hasn't been easy to balance. There is also potentially more stuff coming from generous contributions from esteemed developers such as @Xon and @digitalpoint, assuming we have time to implement (otherwise they will wait for... a future version).


With all of that now being said, while 2.4 is taking longer than we wanted, we have been busy and we are very much nearing the end of development.

And, while disappointing (to all of us) it is important to maintain perspective. XenForo 2.2 was released in September 2020. XenForo 2.3 was released nearly four years later. XenForo 2.4 is not 3 more years away.

But, you clicked this to find out what's new, right? So let's go.

 

[nodle]

I don't know about that.

Fixed Thread 'Image attachments rotated since the update'

Jul 18, 2025

Yesterday, I installed the latest update, V2.3.7. When attachments are uploaded to posts or the gallery, they are either rotated 90°, 180°, or sometimes not rotated at all. This problem did not occur before the update.

• mph
• Replies: 54
• Forum: Resolved bug reports

• 

This is why smaller incremental updates are better than waiting months for larger releases. Things can be fixed on the fly.

 

[beerForo]

Marked Fixed, no patch, message says wait for 2.3.8. I see your point!
Edit: Patch posted for those that need it: https://xenforo.com/community/threa...d-since-the-update.232190/page-2#post-1753383

 

[woody]

I've waited 5 months to update from 2.2.x to 2.3.x, monitoring the x.x.# versions and making sure nothing critical would cause issues....the EXIF patch this afternoon confirmed that my update will progress as planned. After 10+ years on XF, I expect this update to go as smoothly as all the prior ones have.

Much of that time is ensuring add-ons are updated, or making determinations on which can be scrapped in the future. Obviously, less add-ons is always better, but functionality for both the members and admin side does make a handful of them critical. I've been working on a 2.3.x Dev site for months.

I fully expect to wait at least 3 months before even considering a 2.4 upgrade. That is due diligence on my part.

 

[beerForo]

I thought you might like know, I haven't experienced any other issues. I came from 2.3.4 so was also waiting a bit. Best of luck!

 

[Mendalla]

I fully expect to wait at least 3 months before even considering a 2.4 upgrade.

With 2.4, we'll at least go through the beta process and can see what's breaking for the brave ones who test it. Generally, I find most of stuff gets found in the betas and RCs. That said, 2.3 necessitated the updating of a lot of add-ons so waiting gives you a chance to test those properly and see what fixes come out. I've never waited that long, but I also often start testing in my dev with the RCs so pretty much know by the release whether I'll have problems.

 

[ebikes.com]

We're happy to be an early beta tester, manager of the site manages multiple dev teams, has 2 professional testers, and can provide detailed feedback to help find + fix bugs in a fairly large scale install.

But it would be nice to get an approximate ETA for the beta so we can plan for it. We're kinda flying blind on when we are getting this software RN.

 

[Sauravisus]

I wonder how much time it'd take to rebuild XenForo, as it is, but in Laravel rather than Symfony, using Eloquent and Models instead of Doctrine and Entities.

 

[cdub]

I wonder how much time it'd take to rebuild XenForo, as it is, but in Laravel rather than Symfony, using Eloquent and Models instead of Doctrine and Entities.

Is that from the Silmarillion?

 

[Lee]

I wonder how much time it'd take to rebuild XenForo, as it is, but in Laravel rather than Symfony, using Eloquent and Models instead of Doctrine and Entities.

Not as long as it will take to release 2.4

 

[ebikes.com]

I wonder how much time it'd take to rebuild XenForo, as it is, but in Laravel rather than Symfony, using Eloquent and Models instead of Doctrine and Entities.

laravel and symfony are both based on java spring, a framework for java that is a strange fit for PHP.
I think it wouldn't take too long but you'd be making a horizontal move and the performance would be a bit worse. And it wouldn't substantially benefit the end product or the development environment.

 

[CJM]

Need to make text input screen easier to use like social media. Get rid of all the current icons and just have two, one for uploading photos and videos in one step via media gallery and another that expands for users who want to explore more functions.

Most people just want an easy way to upload photos and short videos. Currently it’s way too complex for casual users as even when I post tutorials with screenshots they never read them and still try uploading images as attachments instead of via the media gallery. Needs to be quick and convenient.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Get rid of all the current icons and just have two, one for uploading photos and videos in one step via media gallery and another that expands for users who want to explore more functions.

Unless I’m misunderstanding (it did happen once) that’s already possible with bbcode manager.

 

[Kirby]

I wonder how much time it'd take to rebuild XenForo, as it is, but in Laravel rather than Symfony, using Eloquent and Models instead of Doctrine and Entities.

XenForo uses a few components like symfony/cache, symfony/console, symfony/mailer and symfony/process but it is not build on the full framework, eg. doesn't use Doctrine.

 

[Mendalla]

Unless I’m misunderstanding (it did happen once) that’s already possible with bbcode manager.

It is. I have done some customization of the toolbars but not that extreme.

Get rid of all the current icons and just have two, one for uploading photos and videos in one step via media gallery and another that expands for users who want to explore more functions.

I am on a non-Xenforo (they have simple Markdown-based editor) site that went the minimalist route and would suggest it is possible to go too far. I think that besides the upload and media buttons, you would want some basic formatting readily available. Italics, bold, underline, perhaps even unordered lists. But as we said, you can do this, just takes some work. I do not have admin access right now to confirm where it is in ACP.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I do not have admin access right now to confirm where it is in ACP.

Content >> bb code button manager. It's a pity it doesn't work per style or I'd do a bit more experimenting with it. I like the idea of just having a few essentials showing and the rest via dropdown, but in my case one dropdown would be too big as we have a few extras in there

 

[javakhir]

Too many useless features, it's not 2002-2010, not even 2020, wake up guys, its 2025, during last 2 years everything changed completely,
AI getting ahead of anything, people moved to mobiles, who is sitting at PC nowoday? developers because they use PC, admins of forums because can not be done on mobile phones & that is it! no one else! you must be focused on mobile version, look at this as user, not as admin or developer. if not, in 2-3 years that moment will be gone forever!
Do you really think user know how to use tiptap? they need another year just to understand, additional year to use it!
create credit system, wallet, shop, products, payment systems, vouchers, referal system as core addons, ios & android apps, that would massively give oportunity for forum admins to earn.

 

[Jimsef]

who is sitting at PC nowoday? developers because they use PC, admins of forums because can not be done on mobile phones & that is it! no one else!

That’s actually not true, certainly not for all forums anyway. From what I am seeing the older generations tend to use laptops and computers, but in addition to that all the folks that work all day on computers (or work from home) also use browsers.

10 years ago I started to see a swing towards mobile, consistent across the years, but it’s kind of settled recently with 50% being phones and the rest split between other devices and computers.

Not to disagree that a mobile first approach is a good idea, but to say nobody else uses computers is actually just wrong.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Content >> bb code button manager. It's a pity it doesn't work per style or I'd do a bit more experimenting with it. I like the idea of just having a few essentials showing and the rest via dropdown, but in my case one dropdown would be too big as we have a few extras in there

 

[Chris D]

people moved to mobiles

That happened in the last 10 years, not 2 years.

admins of forums because can not be done on mobile phones

The software - including the admin control panel - is fully operable from a mobile device

Do you really think user know how to use tiptap?

Yeah. Of course they do.

they need another year just to understand, additional year to use it!

It's a shame you seem to think everyone is stupid. Most people are intelligent enough to know how basic things work, and even if they don't, what's complicated about a box that you type in? You don't need to understand anything about that. It just works.

create credit system

Niche, hardly anyone wants this.

wallet

Same.

products

Selling what, how does this benefit the average forum community? Forum admins are already making money from ads and subscriptions which the software already provides -- those that need more use add-ons that already exist, but the sheer majority don't need this.

payment systems

We have that.

vouchers

referal system

There's a tone throughout your post that we are behind the times? Do you really think in 2025 people are putting in someone else's name (Or clicking a link) when they're registering to a website?

ios & android apps

The forum is already fully usable on mobile and, thankfully, with all the modern features of an app. If people aren't already visiting your forum, an app won't get them there.

that would massively give oportunity for forum admins to earn

This is important, but hardly anything you mentioned would actually help admins earn. Admins who want to earn from their forums already do and many do it successfully. Everything else is so niche, it suggests you don't, in fact, have a good understanding of what customers need, generally.

 

[Mr Lucky]

who is sitting at PC nowoday?

I think it is still 54% of our users. We need them