This release focuses on:

• Better design flexibility
• Improved performance
• Easier configuration
• Powerful new features

Whether you’re a new user or a long-time user, version 3.0 makes building beautiful and effective Table of Contents easier than ever.

A Brand-New Settings Experience

Version 3.0 introduces a complete redesign of the settings interface. Everything is now faster, cleaner, and easier to use.

What’s New

• Fully redesigned settings page
• Search bar to quickly locate settings
• Live Preview panel
• Quick Settings panel
• Improved color picker
• Import presets
• Active session checker

The new interface helps you configure your Table of Contents in seconds instead of minutes.

Live Preview: See Changes Instantly

No more guesswork. The new Live Preview panel lets you instantly see how your Table of Contents looks while adjusting settings. The preview is 100% accurate as it leverages an iframe as if it was a visitor viewing the TOC.

This makes styling:

• Faster
• More intuitive
• More precise

Perfect for quickly finding the right design.

New Onboarding Wizard

Getting started is now easier than ever with the new Onboarding Wizard.

New users can:

• Choose a theme
• Preview the TOC in real time as they move through the steps
• Configure key settings
• Get a polished Table of Contents instantly

Perfect for beginners and a great time-saver for everyone.

New Color Palette System

Adjusting your Table of Contents colors to match your brand’s has never been easier. Previous versions required setting a separate color for every element: hover states, numbering, borders, badges, one by one. v3 changes that completely.

The new Color Palette system uses a small set of semantic colors that cascade intelligently across your entire TOC. Set your website’s Accent color once, and every theme-specific detail adapts automatically. And every color you define in the palette becomes a reusable swatch, available across all settings to override any specific element if needed.

Benefits

• Consistent branding
• Faster customization
• Easier theme switching

Update colors once — apply everywhere.

New and Upgraded Themes

Version 3.0 introduces new v3 themes and major upgrades to existing ones.

Updated Core Themes

• Default (v3) — This is an updated version of the “basic light/dark” theme
• Original (v3)
• Hero (v3)

These themes now include:

• Dark mode support
• Compatible with the Color Palette
• Better spacing
• Theme-specific options

New PRO Themes

PRO users also get brand new premium themes:

• Modern (v3)
• Mantis
• Flowline
• Vertik (v3)
• Glass
• Aurora
• Sequoia

These themes bring new visual styles ranging from minimal to bold.

Timeline TOC Mode (PRO)

Introducing Timeline Mode — a brand-new way to display your Table of Contents.

Features

• Proportionally spaced markers
• Perfect for long-form content
• Clean vertical reading experience
• Overlapping Progress bar available

This is one of the most unique and visually distinctive TOC modes available.

More Styling Power

Version 3.0 adds many new styling options:

Numbering Badge Styles

Make your TOC adopt a modern, refreshing look that pairs nicely with modern themes.

• Toggle button styles
• Numbering colors and backgrounds
• Header advanced customization (PRO)
• Top-level heading styling (PRO)
• Separator between top-level headings (PRO)

These options allow deeper customization without writing CSS.

Floating TOC Improvements (PRO)

Floating TOC now includes powerful new controls. Until v2, the floating widget would only show the active heading.

Since v3, the floating widget can either show:

• The active heading (the original floating mode)
• The TOC title
• A single icon
• A custom text

Floating Improvements

• Adjustable width
• Visibility trigger options
• Relative positioning

Slide-Out TOC Improvements (PRO)

The Blend into panel option allows the Table of Contents inside the slide-out panel to visually merge with the panel itself. Instead of appearing as a separate boxed element, the TOC adopts a more seamless, integrated look. This is achieve by removing extra backgrounds, borders, or spacing that would otherwise create a “box-within-a-box” effect.

This creates a cleaner and more modern appearance, especially when using slide-out panels, where the Table of Contents feels like a natural part of the panel rather than an embedded component. Perfect for minimalist designs and distraction-free reading experiences.

Slide-Out Improvements

• Blend into panel option
• New toggle icons
• Dynamic toggle shadow
• Toggle button advanced customization

Reading Time Estimate

You can now display reading time estimates directly in your Table of Contents.

This helps:

• Improve engagement
• Set reader expectations
• Enhance UX for long content

Additional New Features

Version 3.0 also introduces:

• TOC alignment (left, center, right)
• Regional numbering support
• Base font size option
• Extended headings scope
• Title attribute disable option

New TOC Icons

• Newspaper
• Spotlight
• List collapse
• List ordered
• Asterisk
• Atom
• Sparkles

Performance & Technical Improvements

Version 3.0 also includes major improvements under the hood:

• Improved TOC processing engine
• Improved smooth scrolling
• Better jump link behavior
• Selective CSS loading
• Cleaner inline styles
• Grid-based layout improvements

These changes improve:

• Performance
• Compatibility
• Reliability

Breaking Changes

To keep the plugin modern and maintainable:

• Removed v1 legacy support (previously announced)
• Deprecated hexadecimal and binary numeration types

Bug Fixes

• Fixed auto-insert formatting bug
• Fixed bullet spacing issue
• Minor bug fixes

Available Now

Joli Table of Contents 3.0 is the most powerful version yet.

With:

• Redesigned UI
• New themes
• Timeline mode
• Live preview
• Performance improvements

This release represents a major step forward.

Update today and experience the new Joli Table of Contents.

The post Introducing Joli Table of Contents 3.0: The Biggest Update Yet appeared first on wpjoli.

This new feature is based on SVG icons and aims to improve the overall look of the table of contents.

Why use an icon for your table of contents ?

Your table of contents is an essential navigation tool, but why not make it more visually engaging? With the new TOC Title Icon feature, you can add a custom icon next to your TOC title, making it stand out instantly. This simple yet powerful addition enhances the visual appeal of your TOC, catching your readers’ attention and improving the overall readability of your content.

Beyond aesthetics, using an icon helps create a more cohesive and branded look for your blog. Whether you choose a stylish symbol, a brand-related icon, or a fun visual cue, this feature allows you to personalize your TOC to match your website’s theme and personality.

A well-placed icon can also make your content feel more structured and professional, encouraging visitors to engage with your posts.

Try the TOC Title Icon feature today and give your table of contents a fresh, eye-catching touch!

How to insert and customize an icon ?

From the settings switch on the Use title icon option, under the GENERAL > TABLE OF CONTENTS HEADER section.

Once switched on, the Title icon setting will show up, letting you pick an icon.

To further customize the icon, you can adjust its size, stroke width (to make it look more or less thick), and color.

How to use a custom icon ?

If you prefer to use a custom image or a custom SVG as a Table of contents title icon, you can leverage the new joli_toc_title_icon filter hook.

This way, you could easily insert your brand logo or a custom multi-colored SVG.

The post New feature: TOC Title Icon [Joli Table Of Contents 2.7.0] appeared first on wpjoli.

In addition, search engines like Google will most likely be happy about it. Not only will this help your articles rank higher in the SERPs but also they may even be featured with rich snippets!

It is very easy to add this functionnality to your WordPress website using a plugin. Below is our selection of the best Table Of Contents Plugin for WordPress.

1. Joli Table Of Contents

Joli Table Of Contents is a feature rich Table Of Contents plugin for WordPress. It is highly customizable and provides a clean and easy to understand settings page. You can easily choose the title alignment (left, center, or right), the toggle button position (left or right) and icons, change the font size or even change.

As a matter of fact, this very article is using the Joli Table Of Contents plugin for WordPress! To achieve this specific look, we used FontAwesome for the toggle icons, and used the hooks to add a custom horizontal bar under the title. The colors have been set from the settings panel of the plugin.

One of the best features is the visibility options (folded or unfolded in the free verstion, or with a floating widget available in the pro version). The floating widget remains on the screen as the user reads the article and allows to quickly jump to another section. It also shows the current section of the article.

Joli Table Of Contents comes with multiple built-in themes and lots of color and font options to choose from. It is really easy to setup the look of the table of content to your liking.

Download Joli Table Of Contents:

2. Easy Table of Contents

Easy Table Of Content is the most simple plugin of its kind. It does what it says and has gained popularity over the years due to its simplicity and basic settings.

It offers a good amount of options but is lacking advanded customization. For example, it is not possible de change the toggle icon or position unlike Joli Table Of Contents.

Download Easy Table Of Contents:

3. LuckyWP Table of Contents

LuckyWP Table Of Contents is good alternative to Easy Table Of Contents. It features all the basic options you could expect from this kind of plugin and you can even skip the processing of the heading using custom texts.

It features blocks for Gutenberg, Elementor, or Toolset. Its main drawback, similarly to Easy Table Of Contents is the lack of advanced styling and the settings panel needs to reload the whole page when changing tabs, which is not convenient.

Download LuckyWP Table Of Contents:

4. CM Table Of Contents

CM Table Of Contents is a bit different in the way it is working. It allows the use of custom selectors for building the actual table of contents. This means that you can use divs, or tables, or any html tag with custom classes or ids instead ot the traditional H1 to H6 tags. This will be helpful for a minority of users and is a nice addition.

However in the free version, this plugin offers very limited features and options which makes it hardly usable without the pro features.

Download CM Table Of Contents:

5. Thrive Architect

Unlike all of the above plugins, Thrive Architect is actually a WordPress page builder that comes with a Table Of Contents option.

The generation of the actual table of contents is automatic. Just drag and drop the widget on your page from the visual builder and that’s it!

Once you’ve done that, you can adjust a few settings such as chosing which heading tags you want to include in the table. It’s quite easy yet is not meant to be highly customizable.

By default, the table will show on two columns. However, you can change this to one colum if you wish to. All of the basic alignment, margin, padding options or available but don’t expect to go too fancy.

Conclusion

Enhancing your content with a Table Of Contents is the best thing you could for your WordPress website. It is effortless and can only be benficial for both your visitors and Google as you may be featured with rich-snippets in the SERPs

Our favorite pick is of Joli Table Of Contents as it is the one that are using, but feel free to let us know any other plugin that is worth looking into!

The post The Best Table Of Contents Plugins for WordPress in 2025 appeared first on wpjoli.