Skip to main content

Exploring Every Aspect of the Divi 5 Interface

Learn about the Divi 5 Visual Builder interface: the Page Bar, Builder Bar, Canvas, and Sidebar, and what each one does.

Divi 5 - Exploring Every Aspect of the Divi 5 Interface

This is Part 2 of the Divi 5 Mastery Course. In Part 1, you prepared everything you needed before opening the Builder. In this article, you will learn where things live in the Divi 5 Visual Builder, what they do, and how they work together. By the end, you will know exactly where to find what you need so you can design with confidence.

The workspace at a glance

The Divi 5 Visual Builder has been redesigned to feel like a modern, professional design tool: clean, spacious, and highly customizable. It follows a clear hierarchy built from four main areas, plus the panels that move between them.

The Page Bar (top)

Divi 5 - Visual Builder Top Bar

Is the main toolbar. It houses your page settings, responsive views, and publishing actions, and stays fixed to the top of the screen so you never have to scroll back up to save your work.

The Builder Bar (left)

Divi 5 - Visual Builder Left SideBar

Houses your creative toolkit. It is where you toggle panels like Layers and the Inspector, manage global Design Variables and Presets, and switch between viewing modes like Wireframe and X-Ray, opening and closing each tool as you need it.

The Canvas (center)

Is your main workspace, the central space where you build and design in real time. Because it is a true visual builder, what you see here is exactly what your visitors see on the live site.

The Sidebar (right)

Divi 5 - Visual Builder Right SideBar

Contains all the content and design settings for whatever you select on the Canvas. If nothing is selected, it defaults to your page-level settings so you can manage the big picture.

Customizable panels

Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Customize Panels

Every panel in the interface is highly customizable. Drag a panel to dock it to the left or right, group several panels into tabs for quick switching, or use them as floating panels. This lets you maximize canvas space and shape the Builder around the way you like to work.

You can also use the Workspace option to create user-based workspaces or change the default Global Workspace.

The Page Bar

The Page Bar is the control center for page-level actions.

Page Bar menu (gear icon)

[SS here]

Click the gear icon to manage your page's overall settings. From here you can open page settings, save the layout to your library, use the Import/Export tools, clear your layout, open your edit history, or jump to a recently edited page.

Canvas navigation

Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Canvas Navigation

Every page starts with a Main Canvas for your primary content, but Divi 5 lets you create additional detached Canvases. Think of these as flexible workspaces rather than separate pages, used as staging areas to experiment safely or as the foundation for off-canvas elements like popups, slide-ins, and mega menus.

Use the Canvas Select dropdown to jump between workspaces, or toggle Grid View to see every canvas on your page at once.

Responsive and viewport tools

Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Responsive Breakpoints

These customizable breakpoints are state switchers that tell the Builder which device you are styling for. Divi 5 starts with three enabled breakpoints for Desktop, Tablet, and Phone:

  1. Click the ellipsis menu to reveal the remaining breakpoints (there are seven in total) and toggle on any you need, such as an ultra-wide monitor or a small phone.

  2. Drag the edge of the Canvas while in a responsive view to resize it manually and watch your design reflow.

  3. Use the Responsive Select field to enter an exact width, such as 360px, when you want to target a specific size.

Actions and publishing

Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Actions

The right side of the Page Bar manages your progress. Some of these tools must first be enabled in the current Workspace.

  • Undo/Redo and History let you step backward through changes or open the History panel for a chronological list of every edit in your session.

  • Portability and Library let you export your layout as a JSON file (including all Global Canvases) or import one, clear every module with the Clear Layout trash icon, or use Add To Library to name and save a layout, section, row, or module, including to Divi Cloud.

  • Preview and Exit let you open Preview Mode to see your page as a visitor would, use the Exit menu to leave to the Pages area or Dashboard, and use Save to publish or set the page to draft, pending, or private.

The Builder Bar

The Builder Bar runs down the left side and gives you quick access to navigation, your global design system, and workflow tools.

  • Add Layout / Divi Library inserts premade layouts, saved Divi Library items, or a layout built with Divi AI.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Add Layout

  • Layers View is a searchable, hierarchical tree of every element. Expand, collapse, rename, or jump to any section or module with a single click.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Layers View

  • The Inspector gives a high-level overview of an element's attributes, grouping colors and fonts in one place so you can bulk-edit styles across many elements at once. (More on the Style Inspector below.)

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Style Inspector

  • The Variable Manager is your design system hub for Design Variables covering colors, fonts, numbers, text, images, and links. You can create Relative Colors using HSL, or store values like clamp() in number variables. Update a variable once, and every module using it updates instantly across the site.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Variable Manager

  • The Preset Manager is the centralized home for global style management. It houses both Element Presets, which control an entire module, and Option Group Presets, which save just one group of settings such as Box Shadow or Typography. Edit a preset here, and every module using it updates. (Covered in depth in Preset Manager and Preset Preview Systems in Divi 5.)

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Preset Manager

  • The Page Manager turns the Visual Builder into a site-wide control center. Search all your pages, posts, and projects and open any in the Builder. As you browse, Speculative Prerendering predicts your next click and preloads it for near-instant switching.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Page Manager

  • The Command Center lets you type what you need instead of clicking through menus. Click into the Canvas, type a module name, and press Enter to add it. You can even chain commands, for example, typing row > column > blurb > button and using Cmd + Return between each to build a full layout.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Command Center

  • Wireframe View hides all styling so you can focus on hierarchy, giving you the familiar Divi 4 back-end look inside the front end.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Layers View

  • Action Icons On Hover and Parent Action Icons On Hover control whether editing buttons appear on mouseover, letting you reduce visual noise.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Action Icons on Hover and Parent Action Icons on Hover

  • X-Ray Mode keeps your content visible but outlines every element, making it easy to spot which container is causing a spacing conflict.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder X-Ray mode

  • Workspaces it allows you to create personalized workspace and customize the interface, including Builder Default View Mode, History State Interval, Settings Modal Default Position, Page Creation Flow, Page Bar Icons, Show Disabled Modules At 50% Opacity, Group Settings Into Closed Toggles, Add Placeholder Content To New Modules, prerendering, Interface Mode, Color Scheme, Show Theme Builder Layouts, and Enable Admin Bar.

  • Help opens video tutorials and a full list of keyboard shortcuts.

  • Light/Dark Mode toggles the interface theme without affecting your site design.

The Canvas

In Divi 5, the Canvas is a detached, high-performance workspace. The biggest changes are in the right-click menus and the multi-select workflow.

Right-click menus and attributes

Right-click any section, row, column, or module to reveal context-sensitive tools: duplicate, move, delete, copy, paste, inspect, add an element above, inside, or below, reset settings, and save to the library.

  • Extend Attributes propagate styles, content, and presets across your layout. Choose exactly what to push, from an entire option group down to Modified Fields only, and set the scope from a single module group up to the whole page. You can even extend attributes across different module types, such as pushing a Contact Form's button styling to every standalone Button.

    Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Extend Attributes

  • Copy and Paste Attributes lets you copy specific parts of an element, then choose which attributes to paste onto another, including all attributes, just styles, just content, or an applied preset.

Inspector, multi-select, and one-click editing

  • Bulk editing with the Style Inspector shows every color, font, spacing value, content item, and preset in the selected area. Change a color once, and it updates everywhere that color is used.
    Usage: click into a module, column, row, or section, and click the Inspector icon. You’ll have instant access to all styles, content, and presets used in that area of the Canvas. If you need to change a specific color across an entire section, you can do so once in the Inspector. It will instantly find every element using that color and update them all simultaneously.

  • Multi-selecting modules handles structure: hold Shift and click multiple modules, then drag them to a new location as a group.

  • One-click editing opens a module's full settings in the Sidebar the moment you click it, no settings icon required.

The Sidebar

Divi 5 - the Visual Builder Left Sidebar

The right-hand Sidebar switches its controls automatically based on what you select. With nothing selected, it defaults to Page Settings.

Navigating and applying presets

  • Breadcrumbs at the top of the Sidebar let you jump from a module up to its parent Column, Row, or Section.

  • Element Presets sit next to the module name. Click the icon to apply a saved preset, create a new preset from current styles, or add a new one. (See also Stacked and Nested Presets.)

  • The Responsive State Picker sets which breakpoint, hover state, or sticky state you are styling. Each panel also has a search bar and filters for modified fields and variables in use.

Content tab

The Content tab manages text, images, and links. The Responsive Editor, Dynamic Content, and Divi AI icons appear contextually over applicable fields.

  • Elements unlock Nested Modules, letting you place modules inside other modules, such as a Button inside a Blurb.

  • Loop introduces the Loop Builder, which turns any element, including a Column, Row, Group, or Link module, into a repeating loop of dynamic content.

  • At the Row level, Apply Structure Template lets you redefine your column arrangement for a specific breakpoint.

  • At the Column level, the Order menu changes a column's display order on smaller screens so stacked layouts do not look messy.

Design tab

The Design tab refines styling, now built on a composable system with professional layout engines.

  • Composable Settings make design features interchangeable. Hover next to a group like Title Text and click the composable settings icon to add Background, Sizing, Spacing, Border, and more to a sub-element that previously had none.

  • Advanced Units turn every spacing, sizing, and typography field into a mini code editor. Type clamp(), calc(), min(), or max() directly, or insert a Design Variable to link the value globally.

  • Flexbox in the Layout menu controls alignment: set Layout Direction, choose whether items Wrap, use Justify Content and Align Items to position elements, and control spacing with Gap.

  • CSS Grid handles two-dimensional layouts. Define rows and columns, and redefine the grid for mobile to move or remove elements per breakpoint.

Advanced tab

The Advanced tab is built for precision and extensibility.

  • Custom Attributes let you add HTML attributes like data attributes or aria-labels to any element.

  • Semantic Elements and Custom HTML Wrappers let you swap standard div wrappers for tags like article, aside, or nav, and inject HTML before and after an element. Place any related CSS at the page level in the Custom CSS field.

  • Interactions create animations such as translate, scale, rotate, or tilt that trigger on mouse movement and can trigger popups, slide-ins, and mega menus when combined with Canvases.

💡Pro tip: Take a few minutes to switch between Light and Dark mode, open the Command Center, and use the Theme Builder toggle in Builder Settings. Getting comfortable with these now makes every later part of the course faster.

Read the full tutorial

Read the complete step-by-step guide on the Elegant Themes blog: Part 2: Exploring Every Aspect Of The Divi 5 Interface.

Did this answer your question?