Mortar for Bricks Builder is a free utility plugin that adds a collection of small but useful editor enhancements to Bricks. It is not trying to completely overhaul the builder or compete feature-for-feature with something like Advanced Themer. Instead, it focuses on practical workflow improvements that can make day-to-day building feel a bit smoother.
What Does Mortar Add To Bricks?
Mortar keeps things refreshingly simple.
There is no separate settings page buried away in the WordPress dashboard. Everything is handled directly inside the Bricks editor through a new Mortar icon, which makes sense because these are editor-focused tools. From there, you can enable, disable and customise the features you want to use.
The plugin includes several handy workflow improvements, including:
- Element shortcuts
- Structure panel indicators
- BEM naming tools
- ID style export to classes
- CSS recipes
- Smart values
- Editor themes
None of these are huge headline features on their own, but that is kind of the point. They target the repetitive little jobs that can interrupt your flow when you are building.
Faster Access To Common Elements
One of the features I can see being useful straight away is the element shortcut panel.
Instead of constantly moving around the Bricks interface to add the same elements over and over again, you can set up shortcuts for the elements you use most often. You can choose what appears, remove anything you do not need, and reorder things to match your own workflow.
It is a small addition, but those small clicks add up quickly when you are working on a full build.
Cleaner Structure And Styling
Mortar also adds visual indicators inside the Bricks structure panel.
I like this because it gives you a clearer view of what is happening in your layout. You can see element types more easily, and you can also spot where ID-level styling has been applied.
Now, I am not saying ID styling is always wrong. Sometimes it is perfectly fine. But being able to see it clearly makes it much easier to decide whether something should stay as it is or be moved into a reusable class.
That leads nicely into one of Mortar’s more practical features: exporting ID styles to a class.
If you have ever started styling an element directly and then realised you should have created a class first, you will know how annoying that clean-up can be. Mortar gives you a way to move those styles across instead of manually recreating everything.
BEM Naming And CSS Helpers
If you use BEM naming in Bricks, Mortar includes a BEM generator that can apply names across selected elements and child elements.
This is one of those features that will not matter to everyone, but if BEM is part of your workflow, it could save a lot of repetitive naming and clean-up.
The same applies to CSS recipes and smart values.
CSS recipes let you save reusable snippets and bring them back in quickly when needed. Smart values help speed up working with CSS variables inside Bricks, so you are not constantly typing out the full syntax manually.
Again, these are not flashy features, but they are practical. And practical is often far more useful than flashy.
Editor Themes
Mortar also includes editor themes, giving you a way to customise the appearance of the Bricks editor.
Personally, this is not the feature I would be rushing to use first, but I can see the appeal. If you like tailoring your workspace or want a more branded editor experience, it is a nice extra to have.
Final Thoughts
Mortar for Bricks feels like a focused little utility plugin that does not try to do too much.
And I mean that as a positive.
The element shortcuts, structure panel indicators, BEM generator, ID-to-class export, CSS recipes and smart values all target the kind of small workflow friction that can build up during a project.
If you already use Advanced Themer and rely on its broader feature set, Mortar probably is not going to replace it. But I do not think that is really the point.
If you want a free, lightweight set of editor enhancements for Bricks that helps smooth out a few common workflow annoyances, Mortar is definitely worth checking out.
