Best highlight plugins for WordPress
The most popular highlight plugins for WordPress in November 2026, in WordPress.org’s own popular order, which follows active installs. String locator leads with 100K+ active installs, ahead of Highlighting Code Block (10K+) and Highlight Search Terms (6K+). All 76 plugins tagged “Highlight” are below, with figures from WordPress.org that update every day.
Installs aren’t everything: a recent release, a “Tested up to” that matches the current WordPress, and support threads that get resolved show a plugin is looked after. Open any plugin for its downloads, rank history and alternatives.
Research this niche or see all plugins.
Top 10 highlight plugins
- 1.
String locatorThe most installed highlight plugin, with 100K+ active installs. Rated 4.6 from 125 reviews, updated 1 month ago.
- 2.
Highlighting Code Block10K+ active installs. Rated 4.5 from 20 reviews, updated 4 months ago.
- 3.
Highlight Search Terms6K+ active installs. Rated 5.0 from 40 reviews, updated 2 days ago.
- 4.
Mark Posts1K+ active installs. Rated 4.8 from 10 reviews, updated 2 months ago.
- 5.
Code Prettify1K+ active installs. Rated 5.0 from 18 reviews, updated 3 weeks ago.
- 6.
Tooltipy (tooltips for WP)1K+ active installs. Rated 4.6 from 68 reviews, updated 4 weeks ago. Tested only up to WordPress 6.8.12.
- 7.Custom Highlight Color
900+ active installs. Rated 5.0 from 5 reviews, updated 3 months ago.
- 8.
Mark New Posts500+ active installs. Rated 4.8 from 12 reviews, last updated 1 year ago. Tested only up to WordPress 6.7.11.
- 9.
Colored Admin Post List400+ active installs. Only 3 reviews so far, updated 4 weeks ago.
- 10.Featured Post with thumbnail
300+ active installs. Only 3 reviews so far, last updated 14 years ago. Tested only up to WordPress 3.4.2.
All 76 plugins tagged “Highlight”

String locator
Down in the last 7 days:1#367by InstaWP1 month ago
Find and edit code or texts in your themes and plugins
- Installs
- 100K+
- Rating
- 4.6(125)
- Downloads
- 774/day

Highlighting Code Block
#1,711by LOOS4 months ago
Add code block with syntax highlighting using prism.js. (Available for Gutenberg and Classic Editor)
- Installs
- 10K+
- Rating
- 4.5(20)
- Downloads
- 71/day

Highlight Search Terms
Down in the last 7 days:1#2,728by Rolf Allard van Hagen2 days ago
Very lightweight (vanilla) Javascript that wraps search terms in an HTML5 mark tag within WordPress search results.
- Installs
- 6K+
- Rating
- 5.0(40)
- Downloads
- 44/day

Mark Posts
Down in the last 7 days:18#5,929by flymke2 months ago
Mark and highlight posts, pages and posts of custom post types within the posts overview.
- Installs
- 1K+
- Rating
- 4.8(10)
- Downloads
- 12/day

Code Prettify
Up in the last 7 days:7#6,136by volca26 days ago
100% automatic code highlighting using the Prettify library. No shortcodes, no classnames, fully automatic and pure awesome.
- Installs
- 1K+
- Rating
- 5.0(18)
- Downloads
- 46/day

Tooltipy (tooltips for WP)
Down in the last 7 days:6#6,548by Jamel Zarga29 days ago
Automatically create tooltip boxes for your technical keywords to explain them to your site visitors.
- Installs
- 1K+
- Rating
- 4.6(68)
- Downloads
- 22/day
Custom Highlight Color
Down in the last 7 days:17#7,194by Nick Halsey3 months ago
Many devices and browsers provide less-than-ideal colors when selecting text on sites. Users may select text for a variety of reasons, including as a …
- Installs
- 900+
- Rating
- 5.0(5)
- Downloads
- 11/day

Mark New Posts
Down in the last 7 days:17#8,812by i.lychkov1 year ago
Highlight unread posts on your blog.
- Installs
- 500+
- Rating
- 4.8(12)
- Downloads
- 11/day

Colored Admin Post List
Down in the last 7 days:13#9,197by rockschtar1 month ago
Color-code your admin post list by post status. Instantly spot drafts, pending reviews, scheduled, private, and published posts at a glance.
- Installs
- 400+
- Rating
- 5.0(3)
- Downloads
- 22/day
Featured Post with thumbnail
Down in the last 7 days:57#10,312by Giustino Borzacchiello14 years ago
A really simple way of putting featured posts on your website.
- Installs
- 300+
- Rating
- 5.0(3)
- Downloads
- 0/day
WP SyntaxHighlighter
Down in the last 7 days:44#10,855by redcocker14 years ago
This plugin is code syntax highlighter based on SyntaxHighlighter ver. 3.0.83 and 2.1.382.
- Installs
- 300+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Highlight Author Comments
Down in the last 7 days:18#10,962by RobMarsh18 years ago
Highlight Author Comments automatically displays comments made by a post's author in a distinctive style
- Installs
- 300+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
WP Code Prettify
Up in the last 7 days:53#13,067by Soli7 years ago
This plugin enable syntax highlighting of code snippets in your post using Google Code Prettify.
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- 4.7(3)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Gutenberg Editor Full Width Blocks Border
Up in the last 7 days:24#14,092by rahulkanojia5 years ago
This plugin adds borders and hover effects to all blocks in the Gutenberg Editor for easier navigation.
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- 5.0(2)
- Downloads
- 0/day
WP-SynHighlight
Down in the last 7 days:133#14,229by FractalizeR10 years ago
Plugin provides syntax highlighting for about 116 programming languages via Geshi.
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- 4.6(5)
- Downloads
- 0/day

FAT Cooming Soon
Down in the last 7 days:46#14,274by roninwp1 year ago
FAT Coming Soon is WordPress plugin help you easy create coming soon or maintain page with power full panel, you can change all colors, font sizes and …
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Embed GitHub Gist
Down in the last 7 days:7#14,323by dflydev14 years ago
Embed GitHub Gists into WordPress.
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- 5.0(4)
- Downloads
- 0/day

io Code Highlight
Down in the last 7 days:40#15,289by owen0o04 years ago
代码高亮插件,支持经典编辑器和古腾堡代码块扩展。
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin (YAFPP)
Down in the last 7 days:19#15,924by JonRaasch16 years ago
Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin provides an easy AJAX interface to feature posts, with thumbnails & other display options for featured posts.
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Highlight Text
Down in the last 7 days:38#16,111by George Mamadashvili4 years ago
Text highligher for the WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg).
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Syntax Highlighter MT
Up in the last 7 days:29#16,341by iamthechad11 years ago
This plugin works like many of the others that enable the use of the Syntax Highlighter tool. Dynamic plugin loading
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Block Highlighter by Meine Infoseite
Up in the last 7 days:163#16,694by Adrian Mörchen1 month ago
Helper plugin for highlighting blocks within the block editor.
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Syntax Highlighter Compress
Down in the last 7 days:194#18,566by agmorpheus15 years ago
Syntax Highlighter ComPress is a plugin for code syntax highlighting. It loads fast on the website and code can pasted easily into Wordpress.
- Installs
- 70+
- Rating
- 4.8(5)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Simple Author Highlighter
Up in the last 7 days:64#18,927by jimaek15 years ago
Simple Author Highlighter is a wordpress plugin that allows you to easy highlight authors comments. More on our website www.dakulov.eu
- Installs
- 70+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day

Rich Text Formats
Up in the last 7 days:129#20,789by lubus2 months ago
Rich text enhancements for the WordPress block editor.
- Installs
- 50+
- Rating
- 5.0(2)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Sunburst Code Prettify
Down in the last 7 days:37#24,263by Rachel Baker14 years ago
Uses Highlight.js with the Sunburst syntax theme to elegantly highlight code.
- Installs
- 30+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
WP Prism Syntax Highlighter
#24,332by GuiTeK12 years ago
A lightweight and convenient plugin to integrate Prism Syntax Highlighter into WordPress.
- Installs
- 30+
- Rating
- 5.0(2)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Highlight Source Pro
#24,671by kno18 years ago
Powerful, XHTML-compliant, server-side code highlighting for pretty much all languages
- Installs
- 30+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Simple Shortcode Calendar
Up in the last 7 days:799#25,853by kamontander13 years ago
Lets you create a monthly calendar by entering a shortcode. Calendar is output as an HTML table. You can also highlight certain dates.
- Installs
- 20+
- Rating
- 4.5(4)
- Downloads
- 0/day

Search Tools
Down in the last 7 days:409#27,107by Peter Stehlík2 years ago
The advanced search plugin shows analytics, what users look for, can export data, highlights search term, extends default WordPress search engine.
- Installs
- 20+
- Rating
- 5.0(2)
- Downloads
- 0/day
SyntaxHighlighter Evolved
Down in the last 7 days:245#27,219by Bernhard Kau1 year ago
Adds support for the SASS language to the SyntaxHighlighter Evolved plugin.
- Installs
- 20+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day

Qlik for WordPress
#29,196by Matthew Fryer8 years ago
Tools for Qlik bloggers including inserting Qlik UI icons and automatic syntax highlighting of QlikView and Qlik Sense script/expressions on any WordP …
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Quote Blocks
Up in the last 7 days:4#29,254by Abdi6 months ago
This plugin allows you create a visually appealing Quote blocks and can be used to quote people, books, scriptures etc.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
WP Emphasis
#29,891by Ben Balter15 years ago
One-click implementation of the New York Times open-source emphasis script for highlighting and permalinking text.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 5.0(2)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Stand Out
Down in the last 7 days:97#31,495by WP-Biz (Ryan)12 years ago
Add highlights and other text effects to put emphasis on your writing.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 4.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Code Block
Down in the last 7 days:1,310#33,241by Jerome6 years ago
A simple and nice-looking Gutenberg block for displaying code snippets.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
ZK Advanced Feature Post
#33,966by vnzinki15 years ago
AJAX feature post function for your wordpress. Especially you can get featured post for custom category only.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 3.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
WP-Syntax Download Extension
Up in the last 7 days:2,701#36,128by Akinori MUSHA2 years ago
This plug-in makes WP-Syntax highlighted code snippets downloadable from nice captions.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day

Search Keyword Highlighter
Up in the last 7 days:4,917#38,368by samiur66882 months ago
Highlights searched keywords in search results to improve search visibility.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day

Highlite
#38,522by SacredWP1 year ago
A lightweight frontend text highlighter for WordPress. Highlights are saved per user and post, with a simple yellow color and delete option.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Text Mutator
Down in the last 7 days:3,223#40,660by Lou Friedman9 years ago
Highlight, redact, style, add background images and modify text blocks.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Anchor Highlighter
Up in the last 7 days:1,898#41,089by Luciano Castro10 years ago
This plugins adds a class to the anchors that matches the url on your browser so you can style it with css.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Plugin Name
Down in the last 7 days:942#41,511highlight-post-widget16 years ago
A widget for displaying highlighted post on your sidebar and displayed your recent update post.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Simple Fast Highlighter
Down in the last 7 days:3,457#42,194by michielve9 years ago
Fast syntax highlighter written in Javascript.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Key Shortcut Formatter
Up in the last 7 days:2,884#42,608by Jonas Grønås Drange14 years ago
Key Shortcut Formatter enhances the presentation of keyboard shortcuts with simple CSS and JavaScript
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Zeaks Snippets
Down in the last 7 days:3,688#42,794by zeaks15 years ago
A simple, lightweight code snippet plugin with 4 color schemes that displays code in posts similar to how Wordpress.org does.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 1.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day

代码高亮
Down in the last 7 days:5,060#42,815by 紫茉莉.ME1 month ago
紫茉莉-代码高亮,基于 SyntaxHighlighter 的代码高亮插件。为 WordPress 提供代码语法着色高亮显示功能,兼容经典、TINYMCE、古腾堡编辑器,具有多个前端主题,支持30余种语言代码高亮。
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
SyHi
Down in the last 7 days:3,682#42,882by sole16 years ago
Minimalistic Syntax Highlighter plug-in which also makes sure code can still be copied and pasted into your favourite compiler!
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Featured Today
#43,558by Amit Kumar Singh15 years ago
Featured Today shows featured articles like it is shown on linkedin today.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day

Highlight Bookmark Manager
Up in the last 7 days:2,012#45,043by Highlight Bookmark10 years ago
Allow readers to highlight and bookmark POSTs with simply highlight buttons. Easy to add personal notes on POSTs and share.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 3.7(6)
- Downloads
- 0/day