TYPO3 v13 LTS — Ride the Wave

TYPO3 is proudly open-source, and our community is filled with talented and motivated individuals from various backgrounds who have worked collaboratively to make the new major long-term support TYPO3 v13 LTS release a reality.

To put this in numbers: more than 200 contributors have worked on the codebase of TYPO3 v13 LTS since April 2023. This resulted in over 3,300 Git commits, more than 31,000 changed files, and more than 140 new features. TYPO3 continues to be a technically matured, highly advanced, and feature-rich open-source content management system. The CMS features 60+ backend languages by default (including right-to-left languages) and meets strict accessibility standards.

As outlined in our TYPO3 v13 Roadmap Announcement, we set a goal to significantly enhance backend usability and accessibility to meet and exceed the strict requirements of the public sector, including the directive 2019/882 of the European Union (EU). This directive defines accessibility requirements for products and services that are placed on the market after 28 June 2025.

Governments and the public sector are, of course, not the only entities who benefit from the new accessibility features. TYPO3’s polished backend user interface, its built-in privacy and security standards, and the countless customization options make the software a perfect choice for businesses and enterprises of any size, and nonprofits alike.

This article offers just a brief look at the exciting new features and numerous enhancements packed into this latest release. Detailed technical insight with more in-depth information is available at the TYPO3 v13 Changelog. Also, check out the TYPO3 v13 LTS release material.

When you first log in to the backend of TYPO3 v13 LTS, you’ll notice its modern, updated look and feel. Browse around and you will soon realize that TYPO3’s administration web interface has received numerous improvements.

We refactored the underlying styles and optimized layout elements for an even cleaner user experience, making the backend interface not only more intuitive but also aligned with the European Union (EU) accessibility directive.

The user experience (UX) improvements also include the support for color schemes, which is a crucial factor for accessibility.

Also known as dark mode, this display option offers both a functional and aesthetic improvement. It can improve comfort when focusing on text-heavy applications or websites, help prevent eye strain and fatigue, and provide a more pleasant visual experience overall.

From a technical point of view, dark mode can reduce power consumption and extend battery life, making it an energy-efficient choice for certain types of displays.

The page/file tree in the TYPO3 backend is an essential component for backend users. It provides a visual representation of the site structure (known as the page tree) and storage contents (known as the file list).

We introduced a heavily modernized and reactive tree that is built on contemporary web standards, resulting in a streamlined and user-friendly experience. Key changes include native drag-and-drop, improved API endpoints, enhanced virtual scroll, and more.

The page/file tree also supports light/dark modes and supports right-to-left writing direction.

It has always been one of our key objectives to make the TYPO3 user interface accessible to as many users as possible. This goal is reflected in the support of more than 60 backend languages by default, enabling TYPO3 to serve a global user base. The CMS is widely used by international organizations and in the public sector, where local regulations and legal requirements — especially around accessibility and language support — are critical considerations.

Beyond languages, different writing systems are also a key factor when developing localizable user interfaces. The TYPO3 backend now supports right-to-left (RTL) text direction. This feature has a significant impact on the layout and affects various areas of the TYPO3 backend including tables, content areas, page/file tree, and menus.

Right-to-left text direction is relevant for languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Kurdish (Sorani), Persian/Farsi, and several South Asian languages, such as Urdu, Kashmiri, and Pashto.

Check out the short video “Right-to-Left Backend UI in TYPO3 v13” on how to add backend languages and enable the RTL writing recorded by Tom Warwick (TYPO3 GmbH).

We significantly enhanced the backend search functionality to streamline your workflow in the TYPO3 backend. Ensuring comprehensive search results, the improved functionality now searches across pages, page content, database records, backend modules, and workspaces. To use this feature, click the magnifying glass in the header or press Ctrl/Cmd+K to open the search window. The system respects your access permissions, delivering relevant results promptly.

The Form Manager, which is part of the Form Framework in the backend, also features a new search function. This is especially useful in TYPO3 installations containing many form definitions. Type a search term such as “contact” in the input field at the top of the page, press Enter, and TYPO3 filters the list based on your keyword.

A feature that simplifies and streamlines the backend workflow for editors is the option to edit/update multiple records in the TYPO3 backend in one go. Typical examples are page properties or the metadata of uploaded files.

Let’s say you want to update the author’s name for several pages. Open the parent page under Web → List and select the relevant columns you want to work with by clicking on the button Show columns. Now, select the pages you want to edit then click the new button Edit columns. It has the same functionality as the Edit button but only presents the currently active columns. This function, in combination with the column selector, drastically improves work efficiency. TYPO3 limits the view to the field you enabled, and you don’t get distracted by fields you don’t want to update.

The same function is also available in the File → Filelist backend module. The relevant button in this module is labeled Edit specific metadata.

Read the blog post “Mass Editing Columns in TYPO3 v13” and watch the accompanying video published by Tom Warwick (TYPO3 GmbH) to discover how to view and apply mass edits to multiple pages within the page tree, and how to efficiently view and update metadata for a collection of images in the Filelist.

The Web → List backend module received another small but practical change. The data export modal window lets you download data from almost every database table in various formats.

If you regularly need to export specific data, you will love the new option to leverage Download Presets. For example, you can define a preset for exporting a frontend user list that contains the user name, real name, email address, and last login. Once selected, the download only includes these fields.

A practical use case for this feature is a monthly report of users including the date when they last logged in. Presets remove the need to manually configure the required fields for each data export, reducing repetitive tasks and simplifying your day-to-day work.

To learn more about how to streamline your data exports with Download Presets and share them with other backend users, watch the video “How to Streamline Your Data Exports…” recorded by Tom Warwick (TYPO3 GmbH).

Attention TYPO3 integrators! We’re excited to introduce a powerful new feature in TYPO3 that lets you enhance the page tree experience for backend users. You can now easily highlight and annotate specific pages with custom labels and color codes, using User TSconfig or PHP. This improvement makes managing and organizing the page tree more efficient than ever.

As a developer, you can add even more details to a page in the page tree by leveraging a PSR-14 Event and adding arbitrary status information including a label, severity level, an icon, and an overlay icon.

A typical practical use case of these features could be the marking of pages that have been recently changed by other backend users. Another example are icons in the page tree that visualize a campaign or event.

TYPO3 is renowned for its flexibility through configuration. In TYPO3 v13 LTS, you can now consolidate configurations and package a predefined configuration (or multiple configurations) as a Site Set. These configurations can be TypoScript, TSconfig, templates, etc.

The TYPO3 backend module Site Management → Sites offers a simple way to select one or more sets in the scope of a site.

But there is more! TYPO3 now features a new backend module Site Management → Settings that provides an easy-to-use web interface for TYPO3 integrators. The module lists all available sites and their Site Sets clearly arranged. The backend module also lets you edit the settings (override the defaults) and export the current configuration in YAML format—ideal for storing a site configuration in an extension, for example.

Site Sets stored and managed in an extension makes it possible to version-control the configuration and share configurations across sites and/or installations.

The main goal of the Content Types Team has been to build a solution that allows integrators and developers to build custom, semantically structured content element types for TYPO3. The team originates from the Structured Content Initiative and has collaborated closely with TYPO3 Core developers to introduce a unified method of creating content elements, page types, and generic record types, leveraging YAML files to define configurations.

A range of TYPO3 Core changes and new features were required to achieve this ambitious goal, including a new Schema API (see below), better tools in the Page Module Preview, and more.

To make sure that an upgrade to TYPO3 v13 is as smooth as possible in almost every scenario, we released Content Blocks as a TYPO3 extension for installations that already use these features in previous TYPO3 versions. This extension is optional and provides additional functions not covered by the TYPO3 Core. We opted for this approach as it also lets us add further features to the extension without violating TYPO3’s strict non-breaking changes philosophy after the LTS-release.

New projects starting with TYPO3 v13 LTS from scratch can leverage all functionality implemented in the TYPO3 Core making the creation of custom content types easier. The successful integration of almost every Content Blocks’ core features into the TYPO3 Core is a great achievement by the Content Types Team and marks a significant milestone in creating new content types in TYPO3.

TYPO3’s default template engine Fluid has been part of the CMS for many years. The success story continues in TYPO3 v13 LTS with an upgrade to Fluid version 4. In addition to modernized and improved code quality, Fluid now has proper support for boolean attributes and a set of new ViewHelpers. This includes, for example, the Feature-ViewHelper that lets integrators check within a Fluid template if a specific feature flag in TYPO3 is activated.

Transitions from Fluid version 2 to version 4 should be straightforward, as the Fluid developers and contributors took every possible measure to avoid introducing breaking changes to user-facing APIs.

The image manipulation library for TypoScript is based on the GDlib PHP extension, which is bundled into PHP, and is further enhanced by powerful and well-known external tools such as ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick. As web technologies evolve at an incredible speed, we have kept pace with these changes and extended these image processing functions in TYPO3 v13 LTS. The system now also supports the modern image formats WebP and AVIF out of the box.

In addition to the new formats, TYPO3 natively supports cropping SVG images through the built-in backend image editing system, or Fluid’s Image-ViewHelper or UriImage-ViewHelper (their “crop”-attribute). Processed images are stored as SVG instead of rasterized PNG/JPG images.

TYPO3 integrators and system maintainers can verify if the underlying system supports the new image formats in Admin Tools → Environment and System → Reports.

TYPO3 always had the concept of a frontend and backend area with strictly separated entry points for HTTP requests. This has changed in TYPO3 v13 LTS as all requests to the system, whether they address the frontend or backend, now go to one entry point.

TYPO3 installations no longer have a “typo3/” directory for accessing the backend. This change opened the door for a configurable backend URI. The backend remains accessible through the path “/typo3/” by default, but administrators can now adjust the backend URI to their needs.

Tom Warwick (TYPO3 GmbH) explains how to reconfigure the backend entry point in the blog post, “How to Change the Entry Point in TYPO3 v13” which has an accompanying video. The blog article also points out the pros and cons of this customization.

The TYPO3 Dashboard comes with a set of new dashboard widgets in TYPO3 v13 LTS. The widgets provide an insight into your system’s current status and notes created in the backend. Backend users with the appropriate permissions can add a dashboard that shows an overview of System Notes, neatly organized by categories such as instructions, notes, ToDos, etc.

The new System Notes widgets are not the only improvement in this area. Editors often want to know which pages have recently received updates. TYPO3 now offers a dashboard widget that lists the most recently updated pages.

The Schema API is an object-based API to work with TCA definitions. The API enables TYPO3 developers to access a schema and read information from the TCA that is TYPO3-Core-specific. Schemas contain a list of capabilities, possible sub-schemata, and all fields registered in the “showitem” section.

A characteristic of a schema is its immutability. This means schemata and fields exist in collections and can’t be modified after bootstrapping. The architecture of the Schema API reduces direct access to the TCA and provides a unified, clean, and simple way to work with the TCA.

Are you tired of maintaining fields in TCA files and then adding them to an SQL file as well? We’ve got great news for you! The ext_tables.sql file is now only required in rare cases.

We already equipped TYPO3 v12 with a function that can automatically create database table columns based on the definitions stored in TCA. We extended this logic in TYPO3 v13 LTS to cover a wider range of TCA column types to declare the ext_tables.sql file (almost) obsolete. You can still override TYPO3’s smart logic by adding your custom SQL to the file if required.

Keyboard accessibility is a crucial aspect of web accessibility because many users rely on keyboards for navigation. This includes individuals with motor disabilities, limited fine motor control, or visual impairments.

Hotkeys (also known as keyboard shortcuts) are a powerful tool to support users in navigating through a web interface and in executing actions.

We added a simple yet powerful hotkeys.js JavaScript module to TYPO3 v13 LTS to allow TYPO3 developers to register custom keyboard shortcuts in the TYPO3 backend. The default hotkeys Ctrl/Cmd + K (open the backend search) and Ctrl/Cmd + S (save the currently opened document) are just two examples of how useful hotkeys can be — not just for users with disabilities, but also for those who prefer keyboard navigation for efficiency.

The Doctrine DBAL (database abstraction layer) allows TYPO3 to interact with databases while abstracting away the need to handle vendor-specific implementations. Developers use a unified interface to perform database operations, regardless of the actual database being used (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or SQLite).

We have updated TYPO3 and raised Doctrine DBAL to the most recent stable version 4.2. This allowed us to also implement new features to TYPO3’s ExpressionBuilder class. The ExpressionBuilder now features more expression methods to build advanced database queries. This includes concat(), castVarchar(), castInt(), leftPad(), rightPad(), and more.

We also introduced a new method for constructing "if-then-else" expressions, which are automatically translated into either IF or CASE statements based on the database engine in use. Additionally, a new method has been added to cast expression results to text-like data types. This casting feature is particularly useful for converting non-text values into text within complex expression chains.

TYPO3’s reference index (short: refindex) also received exciting updates that will make several operations blazingly fast in the future. We added a range of new fields to the refindex, made several adjustments and structural changes in the related PHP class, and reduced the number of SQL queries required to retrieve data. Together, these measures significantly boost the system performance in TYPO3 v13 LTS.

We strongly recommend updating the refindex whenever you change an extension or update the TYPO3 Core. This means that executing the refindex update should also be an integral part of your deployment strategy.

With the release of TYPO3 v13.0, the first sprint release of the v13 release series in January 2024, we not only performed platform and dependency upgrades, we also removed all TYPO3 v12 deprecations following our deprecation policy.

As a TYPO3 integrator, we recommend that you enable the deprecation logging and review the log file before you upgrade your installation from a previous LTS-version to TYPO3 v13 LTS.

Developers can help maximize the adoption rate of TYPO3 v13 LTS by publishing a compatible version of their extensions. TYPO3 features a range of useful tools to support you in analyzing and updating your code base. Commonly used methods include the deprecation log (see above), the built-in Extension Scanner (interactive interface to scan extension code for outdated TYPO3 Core API calls), and the TYPO3 Rector project (automated code upgrades).

TYPO3 v13 LTS has new minimum system requirements compared to previous TYPO3 versions. First and foremost, TYPO3 requires PHP version 8.2 or newer. PHP v8.2 will receive security updates until December 2025. This PHP version is also required for Symfony version 7, which is another component used by TYPO3 v13 LTS. Symfony v7 will be supported until November 2028.

The Doctrine v4 upgrade mentioned earlier also impacts the system requirements regarding the supported database engines. TYPO3 v13 LTS supports the following database engines and versions:

• MySQL version 8.0.17 or higher
• MariaDB version 10.4.3 or higher
• PostgresSQL version 10.0 or higher
• SQLite version 3.8.3 or higher

When upgrading from TYPO3 v12 LTS to v13 LTS, you can update the platform first, then the TYPO3 instance. TYPO3 v12 LTS already supports PHP version 8.2 and the MariaDB and MySQL database engine versions are also supported by TYPO3 v13 LTS.

As an LTS release (long-term support), TYPO3 v13 LTS (also known as version 13.4) will receive bug fixes for 1.5 years, until 30 April 2026. After that, we will provide free security patches until 31 December 2027. This results in a total support period of more than 3 years.

Read more about the requirements and dependencies on get.typo3.org.

On top of the 3+ years free support and maintenance, the TYPO3 GmbH offers Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) for at least three additional years. That’s up to six years of browser compatibility, security fixes, and compliance with IT security laws for your enterprise CMS.

You will find all the details about the release and how to download and install TYPO3 at get.typo3.org. Detailed installation instructions are documented in the Installation Guide. We recommend using Composer to set up your TYPO3 environment.

Article updates:
▪ 15 October 2024 UTC: Doctrine DBAL version number corrected to v4.2.
▪ 15 October 2024 UTC: Link to Content Blocks extension in the TYPO3 Extension Repository (TER) added.