Magento 2.4.6 Release: What to Expect from the Update?

Summary

Magento 2.4.6 will be released on 14th March 2023. Although it’s a minor release of the open-source Magento platform, developers and business owners can expect some brilliant Magento 2.4.6 release with new features and enhancements.

For instance, the support for new PHP 8.2 is to be introduced in this update. Likewise, the support for PHP 7.4 is to be dropped alongside some modifications that are backward incompatible. With more than 300 quality fixes and even some new additions, the minor update isn’t something you can skip and not consider.

Here’s a list of features and improvements I have compiled for your reference. Check these out!

Magneto Development Gets More Cost-Effective

Adobe has announced extended support for all the quality and security patches for up to 3 years since its release for general availability. So, the Magento 2.4.6 release on 14th March 2023 will not go out of support until 14th March 2026.

Let’s check a few other Magento 2 latest versions and their long-term support options.

How is it cost-effective?

Magento 2.4.3 was released on August 10, 2021. Ideally, if the option for prolonged support had been available, you could still use it until August 2024.

However, that did not happen! Did you know that Magento 2.4.3 witnessed the end of support on 8th September 2022?

Yes, it did! Which means, no upgrades, no support, no documentation, and no security patches! Consequently, businesses had to upgrade to a newer version to keep their store up and running.

Adobe explains that the new release schedule plan and long-term support have to work in favor of business owners as the TCO (Total cost of ownership) becomes much less. For those who don’t know TCO refers to the sum total estimation of implementation and maintenance of software through its lifecycle.

Now, Magneto has decided to release one core application patch every year with performance, security, and other quality fixes. Thus, if you implement a particular patch or version, you get long-term support of 3 years for the same and can expect only yearly releases of new versions.

This is expected to minimize the TCO, helping businesses earn more returns while investing in Magento. Well, this wasn’t entirely about the Magento latest release but is something crucial that everyone has to keep in mind if they want to work with Magento.

Wondering what makes Magento 2.4.6 a vital release to note? Well, these improvements and features will help you:

Performance Improvement in Magento 2.4.6 Release

Support for PHP 8.2

The new update introduces support for the latest PHP 8.2 update rolled out in November 2022. With that, you can expect a boost in performance as you get to leverage the newly introduced features like readonly classes, DNF types, Random extension improvement, fetch enum properties in const expressions, etc.

In fact, a Phoronix report shows a near 2.5% increment in the performance of PHP 8.2 compared to PHP 8.1. Thus, you can improve your store’s performance better with this update.

Dropped support for PHP 7.4

While it will continue to support PHP 8.1, things might not look bright for you if you are still using the PHP 7.4 version. Magento v 2.4.0 to 2.4.3 still supports PHP 7.4 and the PHP version might as well be used with Magento 2.4.4 and Magento 2.4.5 unofficially.

But, Magento 2.4.6 release updates state that it will no longer provide support for PHP 7.4. So, if you are still using it, you will need to upgrade to any PHP 8.X version.

Improved performance of large product catalogs with optimized grid

The update brings performance optimization for large-scale eCommerce businesses that have to display a large number of products in the grid. Using the new setting for system configuration, the store admin can limit the maximum number of products displayed in the grid.

To do so, you can navigate to your Magento store Settings > Configuration > Advanced > Admin > Admin Grids > Limit number of products in grid. By default, this option is disabled. Once you enable it, you will be able to see the default setting with a minimum of 20,000 products.

Read More: How to Change Admin URL in Magento 2?

Platform Improvements in Magento 2.4.6

• Added support for Composer 2.2.x
• ElasticSearch 8.x support
• DHL schema v6.2 to v10.0 migration
• Included support for Redis 7.0.x
• Removal of outdated dependencies
• Up-to-date JS libraries
• Added support for MariaDB 10.6
• Both Adobe Commerce 2.4.6 and Magento open source will support on-premises and cloud OpenSearch.

That’s all about performance and platform upgrades to expect from this update. The upgrade further includes some phenomenal error fixes that can save developers time for good.

Error Fixes in Magento 2.4.6

Magento latest version 2.4.x is expected to resolve these prominent bugs that you may have encountered in the previous versions. Here’s a list of errors for you to check:

• Products added using GraphQL don’t show an accurate cart discount.
• Even if the option ‘Allow All Products Per Page’ option is set to ‘Yes’, products aren’t displayed in the front end.
• Even if the option ‘Display out-of-stock products’ is set to ‘yes’, it still doesn’t return the out-of-stock bundled products accurately.
• In case a product has overridden url_key attributes, it is not possible to generate SEO-friendly URLs.
• ‘Something went wrong’ error when a user dismisses the notification.
• User roles search doesn’t work as it should.

Now that I have covered most of the prominent upgrades and error fixes, let me walk you through some of the new features of Magento latest version.

New Magento 2.4.6 Features

Improved accessibility for people with special needs

Accessibility is a crucial factor in your eCommerce page’s success. You need as many people to be able to access the website as possible. Here, the term ‘people with special needs’ doesn’t just indicate differently-abled people but also users that have limited resources or facilities to access the web.

For instance, people with mobile phones or tablets with non-standard or rare screen sizes, people with slow internet connections, and so on. To put it precisely, these users stand apart of the crowd and need specially designed UI/UX so they can use the site smoothly.

The new Magento 2.4.6 version is specially designed to be more user-friendly and accessible for all. How? Let’s check!

• Descriptive accessible names on frontend buttons.
• Keyboard-only mode can be used to access the Magento front end.
• Accessible name for sign-in buttons.
• Seamless keyboard input option with Checkout, Review order, and Place order options.
• Verbal descriptive labels are available for the search filter ‘Has video checkboxes’.
• Proper page navigation with focus indication on buttons.

Besides, the screen reader option works seamlessly with this update as users are notified of each significant process. Such as successful login, total item count, total number of products in the cart, etc.

Other Noteworthy Improvements of Magento 2.4.6!

• It is possible to load more pages from the cache. For instance, for already fulfilled orders, category page cache for change in stock quantity, change in product quantity in a page, etc.
• If your store deals with over 100 customer segments, you can significantly improve your store’s performance. Disabling the ‘Real-time Check if Customer is Matched by Segment’ option will reduce the number of validations and improve store performance.
• For stores handling over 1,000 orders every minute, Magento 2.4.6 is quite beneficial as the processing speed gets faster with the help of database load balancing.
• Instead of cached prices, logged-in users will now see accurate prices.
• Mobile users will now be able to expand the categories and subcategories.

Final Thoughts

Magento 2.4.6 release version and its highlights include:

• Over 300 quality improvements,
• 8 security improvements,
• Support for PHP 8.2,
• Reduced response time,
• Improved performance of GraphQL,
• Upgrades to latest JS version,
• PWA Studio v.13.0.x and Page Builder v.1.7.3 compatibility, and more.

You can check in detail about each of these upgrades from Magento 2.4.6 release notes. Even if it is considered a minor update, it did bring some amazing improvements in terms of performance, error fixes, and quality.

Want to discuss in detail how the Magento update will bring more value to your store? Should you consider this upgrade at all? Do you fulfill the Magento 2.4.6 requirements and can update to the latest version? Then, our Magento experts are a call away.

We are a renowned Magento development company and can help you with Magento development and customization to migration. Consult our team of Magento professionals to build a phenomenally well eCommerce store!