How to Disable the Screen Options Button in WordPress

Do you want to disable the screen options button in WordPress?

The screen options button allows you to show and hide elements on different pages throughout the WordPress admin area.

In this article, we will show you how to disable the screen options button in WordPress.

Why You May Want to Disable Screen Options Button?

The screen options button is located on the top right corner of different pages in your WordPress admin area. It allows each logged-in user to show and hide items on various sections of the WordPress admin area.

Many WordPress site owners run multi-author blogs. With the screen options button, their authors may accidentally uncheck something that is important.

For example, on the posts edit screen, users can show or hide the change author field, featured image section, and more.

You can control the admin view for all users by disabling the screen options button. Let’s take a look at two ways you can easily disable the screen options button in WordPress.

• Method 1: Hiding the Screen Options Button with a Plugin
• Method 2: Hiding the Screen Options Button with Code

Method 1: Hiding the Screen Options Button with a Plugin

First thing, you should install and activate the Adminimize plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Adminimize page in your admin dashboard to configure the plugin’s settings.

On this page, you need to click on the ‘Global Options’ link, and it will take you down to a different section of tabs.

In that tab, you need to click on the new ‘Global Options’ tab to expand it as well.

You will see a bunch of options to show and hide in your WordPress admin area.

You need to check the boxes next to ‘Screen Options to disable the screen options button for any specific user roles.

Once you are done, don’t forget to click on the ‘Update Options’ button to save your settings.

You can now visit any page in the admin area that previously had a screen options button, like the dashboard or post/page edit screens, and you will see that it is not there anymore.

Adminimize is a really powerful plugin that allows you to completely change the WordPress admin area by selectively showing or hiding even more items than just the screen options button. For more details, see our article on hiding unnecessary items from WordPress admin area with Adminimize.

Method 2: Hiding the Screen Options Button with Code

This method requires you to add code to your theme’s functions.php file. We don’t normally recommend this for anyone but advanced users because altering core files can easily break your site.

However, we will be using WPCode, which is the safest and easiest way for anyone to add code snippets to your WordPress site.

First, you will need to install the free WPCode plugin. For more information, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Next, you will need to visit the Code Snippets » Add Snippet page in your admin dashboard. Type ‘screen options’ into the search bar to bring up the pre-configured snippet from the WPCode library.

Simply hover over it and select ‘Use snippet.’

You will now see the ‘Edit Snippet’ page where all of the options are set for you.

All you have to do is toggle the switch to ‘Active’ and click ‘Update’ to disable the screen options button for all users.

However, you might want those with Administrator permissions to still be able to see the screen options button. For this, you can simply replace the code snippet in the editor with the following:

function wpb_remove_screen_options() { 
if(!current_user_can('manage_options')) {
return false;
}
return true; 
}
add_filter('screen_options_show_screen', 'wpb_remove_screen_options');

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily disable screen options button in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to move your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS or the 6 best coupon code plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.