Do you want to hide the title of a WordPress widget in your sidebar or footer?
WordPress widgets make it easy to drag and drop dynamic content into your theme to create unique layouts. However if you need to hide the widget title, then it typically requires coding knowledge of CSS and HTML.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily hide the widget title in WordPress (without any code).
Why Hide Widget Title in WordPress?
WordPress displays a default title for widgets, and it also allows you to rename them if you want. Most top WordPress themes will then display this title in the sidebar on your site.
However, sometimes you may not want to display the widget title in the WordPress blog sidebar. By default, there is no built-in option to simply switch off widget titles.
That being said, let’s take a look at how you can easily hide the widget title in the WordPress sidebar.
Video Tutorial
If you’d prefer written instructions, just keep reading.
Hiding Widget Title in WordPress
First, you want to install and activate the Widget Options plugin. For more details, please see our complete guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once the plugin is activated, head over to Appearance » Widgets area in your WordPress admin area. Next, drag and drop a widget to your sidebar or any other widget-ready area on your site.
In this example, we’re going to remove the widget title ‘Search The Site’ from our search box in the sidebar.
Simply click the arrow to open the widget and view the options to hide the title.
Make sure you click on the ‘gear’ icon, and then check the box next to ‘Check to hide widget title’ and click the ‘Save’ button.
Now, when you view your site, the WordPress search box will appear without the widget title.
You can use this plugin to hide any widget title. The plugin also comes with multiple settings to hide or display titles based on page or post types and even screen sizes.
We hope this article helped you learn how to easily hide widget titles in WordPress. You may also want to check out our list of the most useful WordPress widgets for your site, and our comparison of the best drag and drop WordPress page builder plugins.
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I would urge caution to avoid using plugins for relatively simple edits. Keep in mind that the more dependency you have on plugins the more work it is to manage and troubleshoot when things go wrong.
Additionally, plugins affect the performance of your WP site and adds overhead, so use only when you need to.
If you are looking to hide the widget title you can try this approach by adding the CSS to your theme’s custom CSS or to the .css file found in WP.
Here’s an example, I used in a Divi theme blog:
.et_pb_sidebar_0.et_pb_widget_area .widgettitle {display:none;}
Hope this helps.
Hi Joe,
We have discussed this in our article on How many WordPress plugins should you install on your site.
Good day.
I added ! to all my Widgets.
The writing is now gone, but i am left with “Block” where the writing was.
How do i remove these blocks?
regards
Willie
If you want to remove a title from a specific widget and you don’t want to download a plugin just to do it, add something like this into your themes’ CSS wherever relevant;
.last is obviously optional, relative to what you’re working on – as is ‘custom-header’ (points to the specific widget I was working with). If in doubt, Right Click > Inspect Element.
It only removes the title, but not the styling associated with it. Even thouth the text is no longer there, I can still see the title underline and the spacing that is applied to it. How do I remove this completely?
Doesn’t work for all widgets, such as Google AdSense, still searching for a solution.
Do you know how can i do this manually, without a plugin?
It is not a very neat solution but should work:
function remove_widget_title() { $titleNew = ""; return $titleNew; } add_filter ( 'widget_title', 'remove_widget_title' );I am trying to remove all of my widget titles. The function you suggested did not remove them.
Great post! Additionally, in a related topic, to also hide page and post titles in singular views there is a Hide Title Plugin as well. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hide-title/
Wow! Thank you, Scott, for mentioning this plugin. I’ve been searching for more than a week now for something like this. Thank you.
What is the code? I’m not trying to install an entire plugin just for this.
Yeah! Wishes do come true. Just installed the Remove Widget Titles on 2 sites (running latest WordPress, Thesis 1.8.5 on one and Genesis/Prose on other) and works like a charm. Oh, the power of a single !
Just a little concerned that no updates on this widget since 2011.
Probably doesn’t need to be updated
thanks for this i was in need of such a plugin some years ago..i was tweaking up my site and wanted to hide the title…for some reason it was not hiding for a plugin, then i just edited some code using plugin editor and it stopped showing…this is a very good tool and will make the job of hiding title easy!
Cheers,
Gautam
This is a very useful tip, thanks! Now, is there an easy way to make a widget title into a link? I wish you could just add code into the widget title area, but WordPress doesn’t allow it.
Try using either one of these plugins:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-title-links/screenshots/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/linkable-title-html-and-php-widget/
If you leave the Title area blank it will do this without a plugin.
Yes, but then you don’t know which widget is there because your title area is blank. Specially if you have multiple widgets in that widget area without titles.