Can we customize the Block selection experience?

[Rybadour]

We have a lengthy collection of blocks some of which have multiple variants. It's difficult for editors to understand the appropriate block to pick. We'd like to investigate customizing the modal that appears that lists blocks you can choose from.

Is that something currently supported and if not is there some way to do it that is more involved? We don't mind doing something hacky if it technically works!

I'm referring to the experience you see in the screenshot here: https://payloadcms.com/docs/fields/blocks

[akhrarovsaid]

Hey @Rybadour

You can use Block Groups via admin.group option set in your individual Block admin configs to visually group blocks together in the selection drawer. This was added in #11239 - you can see a demo of it in the PR. Docs for it are here in the table.

To make it easier for your editors, you can also assign each block a thumbnail/image via imageURL. In this way, your editors can get a preview of the block before selection.

[Rybadour]

The group field will certainly help, thanks for that!

We have been using the images to try and describe the blocks better but we don't get much control over the size and shape of the image so it ends up being very hard to fit our various shaped blocks into the same size.

Preferably we want to be able to fully customize that modal so show more details about the block such as a description, images of all variants, etc.

[simovicaleksa]

It would be great if adding images instead of placeholders was possible.