Oxygen 6.0 has officially launched after a year-long testing cycle that included five beta releases and a Release Candidate (RC1). The release is a complete rebuild, rewritten from the ground up with a new codebase designed to support future development and improved performance.
Why the Rewrite Was Necessary
Addressing the reasons behind the rewrite, the team said their Angular-based codebase had become “increasingly unsustainable.” They also highlighted how their old system hindered development, stating, “ The architecture and technology stack we were locked into limited our ability to innovate and improve at the pace we wanted. Every new feature, every improvement, required more effort and more complex workarounds, which in turn made Oxygen less reliable and harder to use than we—and you—would like.”
The team explained that the old system had become a “bottleneck,” slowing innovation and making it harder to adopt new features.
Faced with the limitation from the old codebase, the team decided it was time to move on from it and rebuild Oxygen from the ground up, “ The choice was clear. To deliver a product that lived up to both our standards and your expectations, we needed to break free from our old codebase. This decision wasn’t just about fixing bugs or making incremental improvements; it was about fully reimagining how Oxygen…”
What’s New
Oxygen 6 introduces updates across several areas, including direct CSS control, a class-based styling system, dynamic WordPress data integration, reusable components, built-in interactions and animations, CSS variables for design systems, a new Element Studio for custom elements, a built-in Design Library, loop builders for archives and directories, and an upgraded code editor.Â
The release also includes performance improvements, workflow refinements, and stability fixes.
Oxygen Classic to Continue
The team had earlier confirmed that the release of Oxygen 6 will not affect Oxygen Classic websites and that Oxygen Classic will be maintained, “ If you’re wondering about the impact of our new release on your existing projects, rest assured that your current Oxygen websites are unaffected. Oxygen Classic will continue to be maintained and updated as before.”
They chose to drop backwards compatibility with Oxygen Classic to avoid limiting the new codebase and future innovation. They described the move as “the hardest decision in the history of our company,” while confirming a “dual-path approach” that will continue supporting Oxygen Classic alongside Oxygen 6.