Announcing the article viewer for Web Widget

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
April 24, 2026 | April 24, 2026 | April 24, 2026

We are excited to announce that help center articles will now open inside of the Web Widget in the article viewer.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

Help center articles opened from the Web Widget now display in the article viewer instead of opening in a browser tab. External articles and restricted articles will continue to open in a new tab. This behavior is not yet available in embedded mode, where articles will still open in a new tab.

Current limitations:

The article viewer is currently available only from carousel items. Support for in-text links will be added soon.

If you have host mapping enabled, articles for now will also open in a new tab.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

Keeping users inside the Web Widget helps to improve the user experience:

Users remain in the messaging conversation context.

They can easily continue conversing with the AI Agent or logically end the conversation within the widget window.

You can better track user behavior within a session. Previously, redirecting to a new tab was breaking the session flow, which made it challenging for analytics to accurately report user movements.

In short: Less tab-hopping, more conversation continuity. In addition, this update closes the gap with the mobile SDK, where viewing articles in-app is already available.

What do I need to do?

No action is required.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.