Miguel Useche

<p>This plugin provides a widget and a filter to display a collapsible archive list in your sidebar or posts using the JS JS library.</p>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ol>
<li>Support for Gutenberg blocks. Add it to any FSE theme or Gutenberg compatible theme.</li>
<li>Display a collapsed list of your archives to reduce space.</li>
<li>Uses vanilla JS to add effects and to be compatible with all browsers.</li>
<li>Select your expand/collapse symbol and date format.</li>
<li>Support for archive filters.</li>
<li>Auto expands current/select year from posts.</li>
<li>Select the categories to exclude</li>
<li>Multiple instances support.</li>
<li>Shortcode support  <em>[JsArchiveList]</em></li>
<li>Generates valid HTML code.</li>
<li>Supports multiple languages.</li>
<li>Compatible with most JS cache and minify plugins.</li>
<li>And more to come…</li>
</ol>
<h3>Configuration</h3>
<ul>
<li>Title: title of the widget.</li>
<li>Trigger Symbol:  characters to be displayed as bullet.</li>
<li>Effect: Effect to use.</li>
<li>Month Format:  month’s display format of the month.</li>
<li>Expand: when to expand the content of the list.</li>
<li>Hide years from before: older years will be hidden under a  link. To save space in the page on old sites.</li>
<li>Show days inside month list: group posts by day.</li>
<li>Show number of posts: display how many post are published in the year or in the month.</li>
<li>Show only posts from selected category: show only posts from the selected category when visiting a category page.</li>
<li>Only expand/reduce by clicking the symbol: select if animations start when click the link or just the bullet.</li>
<li>Open links in a new tab: opens archive and post links in a new browser tab/window.</li>
<li>Only expand one at the same time: select if you want to have only one expanded at the same time.</li>
<li>Show posts under months:  show post’s title under months.</li>
<li>Show post date next to post title: show post’s date next to post title.</li>
<li>Sort posts by: select how to sort the posts under months.</li>
<li>Include or Exclude categories: Select the categories to include or exclude.</li>
</ul>


JS Archive List

Useful

A JS widget (can be used in posts) for displaying an archive list with some effects.

<p>This plugin provides a widget and a filter to display a collapsible list of categories in your sidebar or posts by using vanilla Javascript.</p>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ol>
<li>Support for Gutenberg blocks. Add it to any FSE theme or Gutenberg compatible theme.</li>
<li>Display a collapsed list of your archives to reduce space.</li>
<li>Uses vanilla JS to add effects and to be compatible with all browsers.</li>
<li>Select the symbol for expanding/collapsing categories</li>
<li>Select categories to exclude, so it shows only the categories you want.</li>
<li>Autoexpand selected category (including it parent or child).</li>
<li>Support for multiple instances.</li>
<li>Simple layout configuration</li>
<li>Shortcode support  <em>[JsCategoriesList]</em></li>
<li>Translated to Spanish, Italian Russian, Slovak, Czech.</li>
<li>Compatible with most JS cache and minify plugins.</li>
<li>And more to come…</li>
</ol>
<h3>Configuration</h3>
<ul>
<li>Title: title of the widget.</li>
<li>Trigger Symbol:  characters to be displayed as a bullet.</li>
<li>Symbol position: where to put the expand/collapse symbol.</li>
<li>Effect: JS’s effect to use.</li>
<li>Order by: display order of categories.</li>
<li>Expand: if list should be expanded or callapsed by default.</li>
<li>Show number of posts: display how many post are published in the category.</li>
<li>Show empty categories: display categories with no posts.</li>
<li>Open links in a new page: render category links with target=”_blank”.</li>
<li>Categories to include: categories to be included from the list.</li>
<li>Categories to exclude: categories to be excluded from the list.</li>
</ul>


JS Categories List Widget

Haven't seen any problems running this with WordPress 4.9.8, even though it's marked as untested for a long time.  It must have been well written.

Works well with 4.9.8

A simple Gutenberg block and JS widget (can be called from posts) for displaying categories in a list with some effects.

JS Archive List vs JS Categories List Widget