[Bug]: Yoast SEO disables WordPress 7.0's experimental real time collaboration

[laurelfulford]

Prerequisites

• I've read and understood the contribution guidelines.
• I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

Please give us a description of what happened

When you have a site running only WP 7.0's RC2 and Yoast, you cannot use the new Real Time Collaboration feature. Instead, when you enable it and try to edit a post someone else is editing, you get an error that includes the message:

"Because this post uses plugins that aren’t compatible with real-time collaboration, only one person can edit at a time."

I think this is due to the presence of a meta box.

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

1. Start on a test site running the latest WP 7.0 RC and a default theme like Twenty Twenty Four.
2. Navigate to Settings > Writing and check, "Enable early access to real-time collaboration. Real-time collaboration may affect your website's performance."
3. Attempt to collaboratively edit - this can be with another user editing the same post on the site, or you can create two accounts and edit the same post logged in as different users using a different browser or incognito window.
4. Confirm it works.
5. Enable Yoast SEO.
6. Repeat step 3.

Expected results

1. That collaborative editing would continue working.

Actual results

1. You get a warning, and collaborative editing is not possible.

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

Which editor is affected (or editors)

• Block Editor
• Gutenberg Editor
• Elementor Editor
• Classic Editor
• Other (please specify in additional info)

Which browser is affected (or browsers)

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Other (please specify in additional info)

Device you are using

Mac laptop

Operating system

macOS 26.4.1

PHP version

8.4.20

WordPress version

WordPress 7.0 RC

WordPress Theme

Twenty Twenty-Four

Yoast SEO version

27.5

Gutenberg plugin version (if relevant)

N/A

Elementor plugin version (if relevant)

N/A

Classic Editor plugin version (if relevant)

N/A

Relevant plugins in case of a bug

No response

[josevarghese]

Note

Internal Slack conversation: https://yoast.slack.com/archives/C01NCRHHN30/p1778128337071499

[josevarghese]

Hi @laurelfulford

Thanks for using the Yoast SEO plugin and for reporting this issue.

Yes, you are right that the metabox is blocking Real-Time Collaboration (RTC) from working, and this is already on the development team's radar. Once I hear back from the development team or have any further updates to share, I will let you know about this in this issue thread.

[laurelfulford]

Thank you, @josevarghese! 🙌

[laurelfulford]

Hey folks! Just to follow up on this, it looks like the same metabox check also disables WordPress 7.0's new in-editor visual revisions UI. When Yoast is active with RC5, it falls back to the classic revisions screen.

[josevarghese]

Hi @laurelfulford

Thanks for reporting this. Based on the internal discussion with the development team, the metabox change is a major refactor of our plugin, and we have been working on it for a long time. So it will take more time to implement a change to the metabox in the block editor. Also, the RTC is now officially flagged for the WP 7.1 cycle, which gives more time to work on it.

However, in Gutenberg's published version 23.1.1 (https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/), the Visual Revisions work with WP 7.0. It seems like this PR, which is scheduled for release with Gutenberg 23.3, is changing this behavior to Classic revisions.