Highlighted colors are not applied when pasting styles

[mmtr]

Description

When pasting styles between blocks, individual text highlight colors (applied via More > Highlight > Select color) are not copied.

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

• Insert two list blocks
• Change the background color of the first list block
• Use the "More > Highlight > Select color" option on change the text color of the first list block
• Open the List View and select the first list block
• Click the "More > Copy styles" option
• Select the second list block
• Click the "More > Paste styles" option
• Note how only the background color is copied; the highlight colors are missing

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

Screen.Recording.2025-11-06.at.15.37.56.mov

Environment info

Tested in https://playground.wordpress.net/ with Gutenberg v22.0.0

Please confirm that you have searched existing issues in the repo.

• Yes

Please confirm that you have tested with all plugins deactivated except Gutenberg.

• Yes

Please confirm which theme type you used for testing.

• Block
• Classic
• Hybrid (e.g. classic with theme.json)
• Not sure

[harshbhonsle]

@Mamaduka @mmtr
I believe the issue comes from the getStyleAttributes function in use-paste-styles.js. Currently it looks like this:

function getStyleAttributes( sourceBlock, targetBlock ) {
	return Object.entries( STYLE_ATTRIBUTES ).reduce(
		( attributes, [ attributeKey, hasSupport ] ) => {
			// Only apply the attribute if both blocks support it.
			if (
				hasSupport( sourceBlock.name ) &&
				hasSupport( targetBlock.name )
			) {
				// Override attributes that are not present in the block to their defaults.
				attributes[ attributeKey ] =
					sourceBlock.attributes[ attributeKey ];
			}
			return attributes;
		},
		{}
	);
}

The problem is that STYLE_ATTRIBUTES does not include the highlight color (text background color applied via More > Highlight > Select color). That’s why pasting styles only copies background color and other supported attributes, but not the highlight.

Rough approach to solve this:

Add support for highlight color to STYLE_ATTRIBUTES, for example:

• highlightColor: ( nameOrType ) => hasTextBackgroundColorSupport( nameOrType )
• Ensure getStyleAttributes copies this attribute when both source and target blocks support it.

This should allow highlight colors to be correctly pasted along with other styles. Open to suggestions if there’s a more standardized way to handle dynamically added block style attributes.

[ellatrix]

Why should we copy any highlight colors that are deep down the in some inner block's rich text? There's no guarantee that the target block has the same structure at all. I think copy styles is only meant to work for individual blocks, not across blocks and certainly not rich text elements, where it would have to not only apply the styles but also add the element/formatting for it.