What's new in Composer
Discover the latest updates to Arc XP's Composer application.
Composer 2.6.2
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Production - Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including
The direction of quotations and apostrophes is now working correctly
Using the keyboard shortcut for Inline Notes and Suggestions no longer adds erroneous spaces
Deleted comments no longer appear in ANS
Composer now displays better messaging for 404 errors when stories cannot be found
Suggestions now show up as suggestions after pasting and saving stories in Suggest mode
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Production - Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including
You can now individually mark Kickers and Labels as required in Composer Settings. Only the required kickers are marked as required in your stories, eliminating previous confusion for which items needed to be completed.
Closing a Composer tab and selecting "Leave without saving” now respects that selection and does not save those changes.
The tooltip for WebSked Workflows now correctly hides when you hover off of it.
Pasting tables now correctly pastes all elements as expected.
When setting expiration dates, you can no longer select dates prior to publish, which was causing 404 errors.
Now, when pasting from web-based work, formatting bold and italics works as expected.
Imported stories from Draft API are now correctly importing and formatting stories.
Removing notes from notes mode now correctly removes all portions and doesn’t leave any remnants that cannot be removed.
Pasting pre-existing links from other sources now correctly pastes as hyperlinks.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, April 24, 2025
Production - Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Release summary
For customers using Arc Intelligence, Composer now offers AI-generated related items using vectorized embeddings of your story content.
A new Generate Suggestions button in the Related Items tab lets you instantly surface highly relevant stories—no manual searching required.
See Generating related stories in Composer with AI.
Additionally, this release addresses a number of items in Composer including:
You can no longer make an article planned ready in the past.
Now, when copying and pasting text from other documents, both lists with additional formatting and bold and italics from web-based words carry over into Composer.
Using the delete key to remove suggested text no longer incorrectly removes the subsequent paragraph below it.
After a hyperlink is auto-generated when typing, a double space is no longer needed to create a single space.
Some lingering notes that have no text in them are no longer present when removing notes.
You can no longer make an article planned ready in the past.
You can now paste code into HTML embed options without intermittent issues.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
The AI functionality is available only with Composer 2.0 and for customers who license the Arc Intelligence Advanced package. See AI Editor Advanced package.
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, April 17, 2025
Production - Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of issues found in the Sandbox release of Composer 2.0, including:
You can now update the featured photo thumbnail on older stories.
You can now modify text in manually added options in Kickers and Labels without having to remove the value and start again.
Note
To commit the change, you must press Enter or Add value in the field.
Pressing Delete in Suggest mode now correctly works by deleting forward instead of backwards as if you pressed the Backspace button.
ISSUU social embeds are now working again in V2.
Typing three slashes (
/
) not sequentially in a row no longer triggers the Suggest Mode keyboard shortcutYou can now open and edit all stories in V2, regardless of how old the story is
The Keyboard shortcut for Notes (CMD/CTRL + Option/Alt + N) has been added to the Keyboard Shortcuts list in Composer stories.
The underline highlighting styles in Composer V2 now correctly match what was in V1 and no longer causes conflicts.
Using the Delete key on text with a comment now fully removes the comment if all text is deleted as Backspace did.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, April 10, 2025
Production - Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of issues found in the Sandbox release of Composer 2.0, including:
Hyperlinks have been refactored to work more effectively
You can now apply changes to your hyperlinks without losing your work by clicking a new Apply button when creating hyperlinks to save your changes. Pressing Enter also still applies changes you make, but we’ve added a button to ensure that all changes are adequately reflected.
Text formatting (bold, italics, etc.) and inserting hyperlinks no longer causes conflicts, links to disappear, or text to rearrange in intermittent ways.
Hyperlinks no longer get created before you finish typing your link.
You can now display kickers and labels either in the order you create them or by alphabetical order. You can update this in Composer Settings > ANS meta field configuration > Kickers and Labels > the Planning or Metadata Section > Click the gear icon > select Display in Alphabetical order. When not selected, the system groups kickers and labels how you ordered them in Settings.
You can now select text in a comment and replace it completely without it removing the comment.
Links are now not required in order to create a link list as they were in V1, allowing you to pre-fill out link lists ahead of time.
Composer's WebSked integration has been upgraded to address pitching issues that were occurring.
The Save + Exit button is now working again.
When you change the workflow status on your story, you can now save the change successfully.
After replacing a word, the find and replace function no longer jumps to the first word in the list of instances.
Single-quote marks in conjunction with double quotes now turn the correct direction.
Errors no longer occur when dragging social URL embeds from the clipboard into the body of a story.
CMD/CTRL + OPT + N
without selecting text now correctly allows you to start typing an Inline Note from scratch.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, April 3, 2025
Production - Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including
Circulations no longer intermittently disappear on publish
Find and replace no longer ignores text in lists
On smaller screen sizes, including mobile, featured media and WebSked pitches no longer extend off the screen, and you can now use them as expected
The width of Power Up modals are resized to not take up as much real estate on the screen
Upper quotations no longer transform to lower quotations in some languages
Use CMD+K to insert hyperlinks now automatically placers the curse in the link field
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, March 27, 2025
Production - Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including
The system now correctly applies changes to URLs in hyperlinks.
Navigating to the Featured Media tab on some stories no longer results in an unexpected application error.
Print story is now available again to some users who had an unexpected permission issue that prevented it from being accessed.
Subtype is now no longer intermittently changing values on certain stories.
Pasting from Google Docs now respects paragraph breaks.
Inadvertent highlighted text is no longer intermittently occurring on stories.
Text is no longer garbled when using the Tansa grammar tool.
German umlaüts now display correctly in headline fields.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, March 13, 2025
Production - Tuesday, March 25, 2025 (was previously March 18)
Release summary
We’re excited to reintroduce Inline Notes (also known as Notes Mode) to enhance editorial workflows and complement Suggestion Mode. This update addresses functionality gaps and provides greater flexibility for internal discussions during the publishing process. Now, both Inline Notes and Suggestion Mode function as distinct features, giving you more control over collaboration and content refinement.
With this change, no content in Inline Notes and no changes made in Suggestion Mode appear in published stories. Inline Notes serve as internal comments, while changes made in Suggestion Mode are treated as draft content until someone explicitly accepts or rejects the change.
Note
Admins can enable Inline Notes in Composer 2.0 through Composer Settings. This setting is available until the end-of-life of Composer V1 on April 22. After that, Internal Notes will be a standard feature in Composer.
How Inline Notes work
Inline Notes function just as they did in Composer V1, ensuring notes remain invisible in published stories. Key features include:
Inline button for quick note creation - select text and add a note with a single click.
Keyboard shortcuts - easily create notes from selected text or start from scratch.
Auto-generated author tags - notes include the creator’s name, plus space for replies and discussions.
Clear visual distinctions - Inline Notes and Suggested content appear in different styles so you can easily distinguish them from one another.


How Suggestion Mode works
Suggestion Mode allows for content changes to be proposed without immediate publication. To be clear, changes you make in Suggestion Mode do not publish with your story until a user accepts the changes.
Suggested additions - added text appears only after a user accepts the change.
Suggested removals - text remains visible until a user explicitly accepts the removal.
Existing stories with suggestions
Stories with existing suggestions retain their status in Composer V2, with suggested adds and removals clearly marked.
Suggested removals are not backward-compatible between Composer V2 and V1, so you must be mindful when switching between versions to avoid unintended data loss. In-app warnings appear when this conflict occurs to help you manage your content.
If users choose to switch back to Composer V1, suggested adds appear as inline notes. If you save a story in Composer V1, the system converts and displays your inline notes from V1 as inline notes in Composer V2.
Suggested removals do not appear in Composer V1 and are if saved in Composer V1.
For more information, see Collaborating within Composer.
This release also addresses a number of issues in Composer V2, including:
The left panel now does not break when double clicking.
Curly apostrophes no longer occasionally appear backward.
When a user requests a takeover, now only the person actively editing the story receives the takeover request notification.
The hide photographer and hide credit buttons are now available again when overriding metadata on content in stories.
Users no longer must close and open the story when creating a photo request before opening a lightbox.
When scheduling stories, a leading zero no longer appears before 10, 11, and 12 hour markers.
The Clear formatting button now also clears hyperlinks.
You can now edit all Power Ups as expected.
Smart quotes now successfully convert when working in conjunction with special characters.
You can now again render a preview of your HTML elements that are set as Featured Media.
Find and replace now recognizes instances of words that occur in lists.
Circulations no longer display as blank when they are not blank.
Copying and pasting links from Google Docs no longer result in double underlines appearing.
Having a story open in multiple tabs when a takeover request occurs no longer causes lost data.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
Be aware of the functionality differences between Composer V1 and V2. See the Existing stories with suggestions section above.
Release dates
Sandbox - Monday, March 3, 2025
Production - Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including:
Several updates to Suggestion mode:
Suggestion mode now works as expected, no longer scrambling suggestions or losing work when switching between the new and old editor.
Suggested text removals now take affect only when a user clicks Accept. Until then, the text remains visible in published stories. This ensures that text behind suggested formatting will not be removed prematurely from published stories.
Note
Suggested text removes do not carry over to Composer 1.0. If you switch back, you receive a warning that saving in V1 causes these suggestions to be lost due to incompatibility.
You can now pre-fill data in linked lists without being required to add links, just like in V1.
The display type menu now properly shows all available items in link lists.
Locking behavior has been updated: views in read-only mode can no longer immediately take over a locked story. Instead, they must refresh or reload the page to claim the lock, which now reflects V1 functionality.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Production - Thursday, February 27, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including:
Primary websites no longer disappear or cause issues with saving. The same is true for templates as well.
You no longer need unpublish permissions to reschedule a story
Photo credits are no longer overwritten
We made the following updates to the Tansa and ProLexis spellchecker integrations:
Text is no longer removed from Suggest mode when using Tansa.
Errant spaces are no longer generated in words and before quotes when using ProLexis.
International date formats now display correctly, using DD/MM/YY versus the US version of MM/DD/YY.
In suggested related items, an image is registered only once, and if you click Remove Image, only the selected image is removed.
Now only users who have access to templates can access templates in Composer
The paywall status field now loads default data correctly
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, February 6, 2025
Production - Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Release summary
For customers that are leveraging Arc Intelligence, Composer is now introducing its first instances of integrated AI-driven tools to enhance your editorial workflow with the introduction of AI-powered headlines and subheadlines.
You can now generate AI-powered headlines natively in Composer. Automatically generate attention-grabbing headlines and subheadlines tailored to your content. Let Composer’s AI suggest multiple options that convey the essence of your story.
This feature is accessible directly from the story body or the working headline metadata field, streamlining your workflow and ensuring your stories make an impact.

See Using field-level AI in Composer.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
This AI functionality is available only with Composer 2.0 and for customers who license Arc Intelligence. To use these new features, you must contact Arc XP Customer Support about subscribing to our AI features in Arc XP.
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, February 6, 2025
Production - Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Release summary
A new setting lets admins restrict access to Composer V1, giving you more control over your transition to Composer V2. See ???.

This release also addresses a number of items in Composer V2, including:
Fractions with head styles applied now render appropriately.
Users can no longer publish stories in the past.
New stories save automatically when you switch tabs, as expected (only when required fields are completed).
Legacy block quotes now render appropriately.
Featured media with HTML now appears as expected.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, January 30, 2025
Production - Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including:
You can now paste additional text into text that has a comment associated with it.
Suggestions (inline comments) are now longer scrambled when you save the story.
The Composer WebSked integration received the following updates:
Duplicate WebSked tasks are no longer created through the Slack integration.
Saving and updating the workflow status no longer creates unexpected Slack notifications.
Tasks that are auto-generated by changes in workflow status now appear in the task list for the story as expected.
Save and Exit on workflow status update now works as expected and no longer displays an error message.
Save and Exit no longer displays an error message saying changes were unsaved when a save actually occurs.
Migrated articles no longer display an error message on the Featured Media tab in Composer 2.0.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, January 23, 2025
Production - Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2, including:
Headline styles are now in sync with text in the body. For example, when you selected a Heading 3, the selection box showed it as normal text. This issue is now resolved. All headline styles and normal text now accurately reflect the state in the story body and in ANS.
Reddit, SoundCloud, DailyMotion, and Vimeo social embeds are now working as expected.
Story tags now appear on imported stories as expected.
Published articles no longer remain in Progress status and can be previewed as needed.
The guest authoring experience received the following updates:
You can now update guest authors as needed.
The organization now appears on newly added guest author entries.
Deleting a guest author no longer removes all authors.
You can now accurately search tags with German accents and characters in the list of tags.
You can now paste both unordered and ordered lists into Composer without issue.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, January 16, 2025
Production - Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Release summary
This release addresses a number of issues in Composer V2 including:
You can now save or publish stories without receiving an errant “code formatting” error
Various updates to multi-picklist fields:
You can now delete selected items with the Backspace key.
Your cursor now stays in the search field when you add a new item to keep searching.
Truncation no longer occurs on long item names.
Various updates with date/time fields:
Changing from PM to AM was out of sync between the field to the selector and is now in sync.
The time format now respects the setting you choose, either 12- or 24-hour format, without switching back and forth.
After preselecting one of the quick-select options and opening the picker, the picker now shows the time selected.
Planned ready time and "Publish story time" now properly show the correct suggestions.
Pasted links now generate as expected.
Characters in the working headline fields are no longer cut off.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, January 9, 2025
Production - Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Release summary
This release makes Composer 2.0 the default experience for all users in Production. You can still navigate back to the Composer 1.0 interface; however, we encourage you to familiarize yourself with Composer 2.0 prior to 1.0 going away in February.
This change also removes the Composer 2.0 settings in the Settings page, which allowed you to enable and disable Composer 2.0 for your users.
Additionally, this release addresses a number of items in Composer 2.0, including:
Hyperlinks pasted from Google Docs now honor Composer settings.
Suggesting mode received the following updates:
Suggested text now adds to the story's clipboard as expected.
Suggesting mode now works correctly with Japanese characters.
Hyperlinks no longer disappear in Suggesting mode.
Pasting into the Headline field now works as expected.
The ProLexis integration received the following updates:
Quotation mark processing now works correctly.
An error no longer occurs when ProLexis processes text containing the
&
character.
A
Missing code formatting
message no longer incorrectly appears with pasted text.You can now paste large amounts of content meta description and Composer Settings reflects the max character count.
Workflow statuses are now reflecting the display order rather than the ID for the order of statuses in the drop-down menu.
Distributor fields (name and category) are now prefilled correctly when creating a story from a template.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Wednesday, December 18, 2024
Production - Thursday, December 19, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including:
Interstitial links no longer insert in the incorrect location
We resolved various issues with saving stories:
The browser's back button no longer causes version conflicts when saving stories
Suggested text now saves appropriately
Linked text in Suggestion mode no longer reverts to normal text or disappears when you reopen a story
Smart quotes in headlines and subheadlines are now correctly being applied
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, December 12, 2024
Production - Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including
Translation updates
An issue where the default value was not being set for Display Time when publishing content
An issue where display typograph setting was not being respected
Character counts are now displayed even without a limit set for different headlines
An issue where mailto: and tel: were not working on Link Lists
An issue where text that had a link associated to it could not have a comment
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, December 5, 2024
Production - Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including
Composer V1 is no longer supported in Sandbox environments.
Admins can now right-click to open templates in a new tab
An issue where Composer 2.0 regenerated URLs for scheduled stories on update without users directly hitting regenerate URLs
An issue where URLs pasted into Composer were not automatically creating hyperlinks
There is now a setting to automatically turn quotes to chevrons (<< >>) for French browsers only
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Monday, December 2, 2024
Production - Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of issues in Composer V2 including
We’ve made small improvements to the mobile experience, removing the two-pane view that hindered authors and editors from writing in Composer effectively
An issue where search by ID didn’t work if the user had read-only permission
An issue where scheduled updates did not generate proper timestamps
Various fixes where apostrophes were not displaying in the proper direction
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, November 21, 2024
Production - Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2, including:
Dashes were converting to bulleted lists. Now, typing
*
creates a bulleted list and dashes are not auto-formatted as lists.The distributor field now pre-populates values correctly.
Freelancer role permissions now work appropriately.
When pasting from Google Docs and Word, paragraph alignment now works as expected.
Scheduled stories now auto-publish as expected.
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, November 14, 2024
Production - Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including:
An issue where headline character count limits were incorrect
An issue where time had to be selected before date to prevent the calendar from preemptively closing
An issue where
additional_properties.is_published
set tofalse
when unpublishing a story through an IFX eventAn issue where Composer defaults to lightbox and giving spinner when adding photo
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Monday, November 11, 2024
Production - Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including:
An issue with errant replacements with Tansa spellchecker
Various issues with smart quotations
Issue where Composer stories could not be saved with some special characters
An issue where the cursor was jumping to the end of the heading and subheading
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, October 31, 2024
Production - Thursday, November 7, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including
You now have the ability to select planned ready time when you publish stories
An issue where the Back to old editor button overlapped the Insert content button
An issue where users were asked to save when there were no unsaved changes when accessing revision history
An issue where scheduled quick pick times/dates were not respecting settings when publishing stories
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, October 24, 2024
Production - Thursday, October 31, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2, including:
Updates to WebSked integration
All task templates now appear as expected in WebSked
A publication default is now correctly set and applied
You no longer have to reenter website information
Updates to find and replace
Better support for searching with character-based languages like Japanese and Korean
Find and replace now works with suggested content as expected
A new Replace button on Featured media sections lets you more easily go back to Photo Center or Video Center to select and replace featured media rather than having to remove it.
Unnecessary saves no longer occur when you open revisions
Affected users
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, October 17, 2024
Production - Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including
Display dates can now be set to a date in the past for back dating stories
Issues with Save and Exit not releasing the lock
A small issue with the distributor field not working correctly
An issue where non breaking spaces were incorrectly formatted when pasting content
An issue where some stories could not be re-published
An issue where hyperlinks were disappearing when users switched between V1 and V2
An issue where save was required even if no changes were made
An issue where hyperlinks with http were not being forwarded to the correct URL
Affected users
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, October 10, 2024
Production - Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2 including:
In 2.0 only, you can now set max character limits on additional headline types (mobile, native, etc)
Users can now access pre-selected publish times set by the planned ready field when publishing or updating stories
Various UI bug fixes involved in resizing the browser window
Several fixes around quotations and smart quote formatting
An issue where some power up preview frames were being cut off
An issue where display position wasn’t available on featured media options
Size display menu is no longer displayed when printing stories
Some intermittent issues where stories remained locked after leaving the story
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, October 3, 2024
Production - Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Release summary
This release addresses a number of items in Composer V2, including:
Additional support for new Instagram URLs
Workflow status drop-down now supports saving and exiting so certain users don’t have to take over or knock on a story
Various fixes to smart quote functionality
An issue where hitting enter when using Japanese or Korean keyboards caused words to get cut off and the cursor to move to a different line
An issue where the contextual formatting menu was not displaying the correct heading style
An issue where some articles could not be republished (updated)
A few minor translation updates
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
None
Release dates
Sandbox - Thursday, September 26, 2024
Production - Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Release summary
This version of Composer makes significant strides in helping your users understand what has happened at a given point in time on previous versions of stories through Revision History.
Key Enhancements
Improved Revision Comparison: When you select a version in Revision History, you now see data that was added, removed, or unchanged at that specific point in time compared to the previous version. Previously, selected versions were always comparing against the latest version that made it effectively impossible to tell what data was added or removed at a given point in time. See Using Revision History.
Friendly field labels: We’ve removed the confusing variables that appeared previously and now show more friendly, semantic labels.
Check out the full list of new features
Improved Revision Comparison
Selecting a version compares it to the immediately previous version. For example, selecting Version 100 shows what was updated compared to Version 99 and so on and so forth.
Friendly field labels
Labels under Meta Differences now appear in a more friendly way so you can understand which fields were actually modified at a glance. No more confusing, technical variable names.
Untracked metadata and feature limitations
It's important to note that certain types of data tracking were never included in Revision History. If you’d like these items prioritized, we encourage you to vote on them in the Ideas Portal.
Currently, Revision History does not track the following metadata changes:
Circulations
Authors
Corrections
Related items
SEO Keywords
Tags
Comments
Stock symbols
Featured media overrides
Additionally, Revision History remains capped at tracking 100 versions and does not log actions taken on a story, such as cloning or WebSked updates.
Bug fixes
An issue where heading styles (H1-H6) could not have float alignment applied
An issue where subtype was not being reflected from template settings
Updates to the keyboard shortcuts list to accurately reflect working keyboard shortcuts
Reenabled the ability for anyone to delete a comment
An issue where tags were not being saved accordingly
An issue where toggleable fields were editable in read only mode
Users affected
Composer users
Action required
This functionality is available in only Composer 2.0. To use these new features, you must enable Composer 2.0 in each of your environments.
Previous release notes available upon request.