Plugin info

Total downloads: 2,860,695
Active installs: 100,000
Total reviews: 236
Average rating: 4.3
Support threads opened: 1
Support threads resolved: 0 (0%)
Available in: 22 language(s)
Contributors: 1
Last updated: 4/21/2025 (254 days ago)
Added to WordPress: 5/29/2010 (15 years old)
Minimum WordPress version: 5.3
Tested up to WordPress version: 6.8.3
Minimum PHP version: 5.6.20

Maintenance & Compatibility

Maintenance score

Stale • Last updated 254 days ago • Support resolved 0% • 236 reviews

37/100

Is Simple Lightbox abandoned?

Likely maintained (last update 254 days ago).

Compatibility

Requires WordPress: 5.3
Tested up to: 6.8.3
Requires PHP: 5.6.20

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Description

Simple Lightbox is a very simple and customizable lightbox that is easy to add to your WordPress website.

Features

Options for customizing the lightbox behavior are located in the Appearance > Lightbox admin menu (or just click the Settings link below the plugin’s name when viewing the list of installed plugins)

  • Automatically activate links (no manual coding required)
  • Automatically resize lightbox to fit in window
  • Customize lightbox with themes
  • Mobile-optimized responsive themes included
  • Customizable lightbox animations
  • Infinitely customizable with add-ons
  • Supports WordPress image attachment links
  • Supports links in widgets
  • Keyboard Navigation
  • Display media metadata (caption, description, etc.) in lightbox
  • Enable Lightbox depending on Page Type (Home, Pages, Archive, etc.)
  • Group image links (play as a slideshow)
  • Group image links by Post (separate slideshow for each post on page)

Usage

  1. Insert links to images/image attachments into your posts/pages

That’s it! The image will be displayed in a lightbox automatically.

Installation

  1. Install and activate SLB
  2. Verify that your site’s theme uses the wp_head(), wp_footer(), & the_content() template tags (standard in any professional theme)

Frequently Asked Questions

Get more information on Simple Lightbox’s official page

Review feed

thedoctorcoernel
3/24/2023

Installed. Used. Simple!

I installed it, linked a picture and it worked. I could not find an embed of Google Fonts (using Firefox Inspector) so the GDPR-Complaint seems to be outdated.

Screenshots

  1. Lightbox Customization Options

    Lightbox Customization Options

  2. Light Theme

    Light Theme

  3. Dark Theme

    Dark Theme

Changelog

2.9.4

  • Optimize: Escape special characters in DOM attributes.
  • Update: Confirm WordPress 6.2-6.8 compatibility.

2.9.3

  • Hotfix: WordPress 6.1 wp_rand() bug (32-bit platforms) (#974)
  • Update: Confirm WordPress 6.1 compatibility
  • Optimize: Media item cache key generation
  • Optimize: Prune build tasks

2.9.2

  • Optimize: Symbolic link handing for file/directory paths.

2.9.1

  • Fix: Validate hook priority values (Let’s Getz Prioritized)

2.9.0

  • Add: Support WebP image format
  • Add: Support AVIF image format
  • Add: Documentation link to readme file
  • Optimize: Code cleanup/refactoring
  • Optimize: WPCS validation (Phase 1)
  • Optimize: Activate links after all other filters
  • Optimize: Plugin metadata retrieval
  • Update: Confirm WordPress 6.0 compatibility
  • Update: Build dependencies
  • Update: GitHub issue templates

2.8.1

  • Update: PHP 5.6 Compatibility
  • Add: PHPCS configuration
  • Add: GitHub Issue templates

2.8.0

  • Update: WordPress 5.3+ required.
  • Update: PHP 7.2+ required.
  • Optimize: Link detection up to 2x faster.
  • Optimize: Options data handling.
  • Optimize: Default title filtering.
  • Optimize: Standardize media item data structure to avoid conflicts with third-party data.
  • Optimize: Load only necessary media item properties in browser.
  • Optimize: Filter all media items (instead of each individual item).
    • Filter Removed: media_item_properties (single item).
    • Filter Added: media_items (all items).
  • Fix: area elements included in link detection (This is Jim’s Area).

See full changelog