refactor!: publish active locale by default, remove defaultLocalePublishOption

[paulpopus]

Summary

The Admin UI Publish button required a config flag before it would publish only the active locale. Now the button always publishes the active locale when the document has localized fields, and offers "Publish all locales" as a secondary option. This removes the localization.defaultLocalePublishOption config property, since there is no longer a choice to configure.

Why

Editors expect that publishing while viewing one locale affects that locale, not every locale at once. The opt-in flag added friction for teams who wanted the safer, scoped behaviour. Making active-locale-only publishing the default matches editor intent and removes a config decision.

How

• The Publish button's primary action now always publishes the active locale when the document has localized fields and the user has publish permission. "Publish all locales" moves to a secondary dropdown option in that case.
• The dropdown item now carries a stable ID tied to its action (publish-all-locales), not its position. Previously the same ID meant two different actions depending on config, which was a latent bug.
• Existing tests that published a specific locale through the dropdown now use the primary button. Tests that publish all locales use the renamed dropdown ID.
• A codemod, remove-default-locale-publish-option, removes the config property from existing projects and flags any config that set it to 'all', since that combination changes behaviour with no config replacement.

Breaking changes

localization.defaultLocalePublishOption no longer exists. Projects that left it unset, or set it to 'all', will see the Publish button switch from publishing all locales to publishing the active locale only. Projects that set it to 'active' see no change. Run npx @payloadcms/codemod --transform remove-default-locale-publish-option to remove the property. See the 4.0 migration guide for full details.

Screen.Recording.2026-08-20.at.19.04.10.mov

[github-actions]

📦 esbuild Bundle Analysis for payload

This analysis was generated by esbuild-bundle-analyzer. 🤖

Meta File	Out File	Size (raw)	Note
packages/next/meta_index.json	esbuild/index.js	213.92 KB	✅ No change
packages/payload/meta_index.json	esbuild/index.js	1.40 MB	✅ -129 B (-0.0%)
packages/payload/meta_shared.json	esbuild/exports/shared.js	213.26 KB	✅ -129 B (-0.1%)
packages/richtext-lexical/meta_client.json	esbuild/exports/client_optimized/index.js	286.50 KB	✅ No change
packages/ui/meta_client.json	esbuild/exports/client_optimized/index.js	36.54 KB	✅ No change
packages/ui/meta_shared.json	esbuild/exports/shared_optimized/index.js	18.95 KB	✅ No change

Largest paths

These visualization shows top 20 largest paths in the bundle.

Meta file: packages/next/meta_index.json, Out file: esbuild/index.js

Path	Size
../../node_modules	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ████████████████████████▊ }}}$ 99.0%, 209.89 KB
dist/adapters/router.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.3%, 718 B
dist/adapters/server.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.3%, 533 B
dist/adapters/layout.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.2%, 526 B
dist/adapters/views.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.2%, 409 B
dist/esbuildEntry.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.0%, 0 B

Meta file: packages/payload/meta_index.json, Out file: esbuild/index.js

Path	Size
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dist/fields/hooks	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▊ }}}$ 3.2%, 44.38 KB
dist/collections/operations	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▊ }}}$ 3.1%, 42.96 KB
dist/utilities/configToJSONSchema.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.1%, 15.99 KB
dist/auth/operations	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.1%, 15.57 KB
dist/queues/operations	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.0%, 14.29 KB
dist/fields/config	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.0%, 13.63 KB
dist/globals/operations	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.0%, 13.36 KB
dist/fields/validations.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.8%, 10.69 KB
dist/collections/config	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.7%, 9.93 KB
dist/bin/generateImportMap	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.7%, 9.84 KB
dist/config/orderable	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.6%, 8.07 KB
dist/uploads/fetchAPI-multipart	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.6%, 7.87 KB
dist/index.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.6%, 7.78 KB
dist/hierarchy/utils	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.5%, 7.64 KB
dist/database/migrations	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.5%, 7.56 KB
dist/config/sanitize.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.5%, 7.07 KB
dist/collections/endpoints	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.4%, 6.12 KB
dist/auth/strategies	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.4%, 5.61 KB
dist/uploads/endpoints	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.4%, 5.58 KB
(other)	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ████████ }}}$ 32.3%, 451.31 KB

Meta file: packages/payload/meta_shared.json, Out file: esbuild/exports/shared.js

Path	Size
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dist/fields/validations.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █▎ }}}$ 5.1%, 10.69 KB
dist/fields/config	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▋ }}}$ 2.8%, 5.83 KB
dist/utilities/traverseFields.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▌ }}}$ 2.1%, 4.45 KB
dist/collections/config	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▍ }}}$ 1.6%, 3.33 KB
dist/config/orderable	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▍ }}}$ 1.5%, 3.13 KB
dist/fields/baseFields	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.3%, 2.79 KB
dist/utilities/deepCopyObject.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.3%, 2.69 KB
dist/config/client.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.2%, 2.56 KB
dist/auth/cookies.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.7%, 1.55 KB
dist/utilities/flattenTopLevelFields.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.7%, 1.41 KB
dist/utilities/getVersionsConfig.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.5%, 1.04 KB
dist/globals/config	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.4%, 939 B
dist/utilities/flattenAllFields.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.4%, 793 B
dist/utilities/unflatten.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.4%, 779 B
dist/utilities/sanitizeUserDataForEmail.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.3%, 713 B
dist/auth/extractJWT.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.3%, 696 B
dist/utilities/getFieldPermissions.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.3%, 651 B
dist/utilities/getSafeRedirect.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.3%, 632 B
dist/errors/ValidationError.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ }}}$ 0.3%, 577 B
(other)	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ███████ }}}$ 28.1%, 58.65 KB

Meta file: packages/richtext-lexical/meta_client.json, Out file: esbuild/exports/client_optimized/index.js

Path	Size
dist/features/blocks	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ███▎ }}}$ 13.1%, 37.20 KB
dist/lexical/ui	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ███ }}}$ 12.1%, 34.20 KB
dist/lexical/plugins	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ██▉ }}}$ 11.7%, 33.01 KB
dist/features/table	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ██▍ }}}$ 9.6%, 27.22 KB
dist/features/link	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █▋ }}}$ 6.6%, 18.82 KB
dist/features/toolbars	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █▌ }}}$ 6.2%, 17.45 KB
dist/features/upload	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █▎ }}}$ 5.0%, 14.28 KB
dist/features/textState	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▉ }}}$ 3.9%, 11.08 KB
dist/lexical/utils	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▉ }}}$ 3.5%, 10.02 KB
dist/features/relationship	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▊ }}}$ 3.4%, 9.61 KB
dist/features/converters	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▊ }}}$ 3.0%, 8.36 KB
dist/utilities/fieldsDrawer	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▋ }}}$ 2.9%, 8.12 KB
dist/features/debug	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▋ }}}$ 2.6%, 7.40 KB
dist/lexical/config	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▍ }}}$ 1.8%, 5.14 KB
dist/features/lists	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.3%, 3.64 KB
dist/features/format	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.2%, 3.28 KB
dist/lexical/LexicalEditor.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.1%, 3.23 KB
dist/features/horizontalRule	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.1%, 3.18 KB
dist/field/Field.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.0%, 2.88 KB
dist/lexical/nodes	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.9%, 2.66 KB
(other)	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █████████████████████▋ }}}$ 86.9%, 246.09 KB

Meta file: packages/ui/meta_client.json, Out file: esbuild/exports/client_optimized/index.js

Path	Size
dist/exports/client	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █████████████████████████ }}}$ 100.0%, 26.90 KB

Meta file: packages/ui/meta_shared.json, Out file: esbuild/exports/shared_optimized/index.js

Path	Size
dist/graphics/Logo	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ███████▋ }}}$ 30.5%, 5.57 KB
../../node_modules	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ███▌ }}}$ 14.5%, 2.65 KB
dist/graphics/Icon	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ██ }}}$ 8.3%, 1.51 KB
dist/utilities/formatDocTitle	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █▊ }}}$ 7.2%, 1.32 KB
dist/providers/TableColumns	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █▏ }}}$ 4.7%, 866 B
dist/utilities/getGlobalData.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █ }}}$ 4.2%, 762 B
dist/utilities/api.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █ }}}$ 4.1%, 756 B
dist/utilities/groupNavItems.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █ }}}$ 4.1%, 745 B
dist/elements/Translation	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▋ }}}$ 2.7%, 493 B
dist/utilities/handleTakeOver.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▌ }}}$ 2.4%, 440 B
dist/utilities/traverseForLocalizedFields.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▌ }}}$ 2.3%, 419 B
dist/elements/withMergedProps	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▍ }}}$ 1.9%, 339 B
dist/utilities/getNavGroups.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▍ }}}$ 1.9%, 338 B
dist/utilities/getVisibleEntities.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▍ }}}$ 1.8%, 329 B
dist/elements/WithServerSideProps	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.3%, 232 B
dist/layouts/Root	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.3%, 230 B
dist/utilities/handleGoBack.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▎ }}}$ 1.0%, 180 B
dist/fields/mergeFieldStyles.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.9%, 158 B
dist/forms/Form	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.8%, 152 B
dist/utilities/handleBackToDashboard.js	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ ▏ }}}$ 0.8%, 152 B
(other)	${{\color{Goldenrod}{ █████████████████▍ }}}$ 69.5%, 12.68 KB

Details

Next to the size is how much the size has increased or decreased compared with the base branch of this PR.

• ‼️: Size increased by 20% or more. Special attention should be given to this.
• ⚠️: Size increased in acceptable range (lower than 20%).
• ✅: No change or even downsized.
• 🗑️: The out file is deleted: not found in base branch.
• 🆕: The out file is newly found: will be added to base branch.