When creating new block directly from ContentArea, the block is automatically published and added to ContentArea. This behavior is not configurable. In this article I will show how to add new block as a draft.
Creating new block from ContentArea

We need to prepare a new EditorDescriptor for ContentArea type. It will inherit from built-in ContentAreaEditorDescriptor. The editor will use custom widgets for All Properties mode and for On Page edit overlay. So we need to set ClientEditingClass and OverlayConfiguration.

Both overlay and editing widget use CreateContentFromSelector command when adding new block. Command has autoPublish property used to check if the content should be automatically published or created as a draft. The command is created every time when “Create a new block” link is clicked, so we have to override original “execute” method, copy the method body and set “autopublish” to false. For widget and for overlay code is almost the same.

For editing widget:

For overlay:

After running the site, when creating content using “Create new block”, new blocks are added to ContentArea as drafts.