How To Disable Widget Blocks In WordPress

The latest version of WordPress 5.8 comes with additional new features and Widget Block Editor is one of them. The widget block editor is based on the Gutenberg editor that you have in post add/edit. In this article, you will see how to disable widget blocks in Wordpress and get back to the classic editor in simple ways.

By using this new block editor, you will be able to add the block to the widget area in the same way you do for the posts. It is easy to use and has more improvement as compared to the older one. As WordPress is a popular CMS, they know what is best for their users and that is why they continuously work on new features and try to improve them. Also, have a look at Popular WordPress Themes.

Have A Look At How To Disable Widget Blocks In WordPress

As we are talking about the widget block editor, you will be able to see your new widget screen by going to Appearance > Widgets. The widget screen will look like it.

This new block editor is going to work fine with the old widgets that you have. But what if you don’t want this new block-based widget editor and want to disable it?

And of course, want to switch to the WordPress classic editor.

To do that, let us see 3 ways in which you can disable Widget Blocks in WordPress.

1. By using the use_widgets_block_editor filter hook

In How To Disable Widget Blocks In WordPress, Calling this filter hook will tell WP to disable the widget Blocks. All you have to do is add the following single-line code in your active theme’s functions.php file and save. For doing this, I recommend using a child theme.

2. By Using the remove_theme_support

For disabling the widget blocks, the theme’s author needs to have added the following snippet in the setup/configuration file of the theme.

Then only function remove_theme_support(‘widget-block-editor’) will disable the block editor. See the below code:

3. By using plugins

In order to disable widgets blocks in Wordpress, there are two useful plugins. You just need to install and activate those plugins. This method of using plugins is for those people who hardly know the coding stuff and don’t want to deal with that.

Classic Widgets and Disable Gutenberg

These are the two plugins that will do the same thing that the above methods did for you.

Installing The Classic Widgets Plugin

Once you have installed and activated this plugin, it is going to automatically disable the block editor and you are free to enjoy using the classic widget screen.

Steps for installing plugin:

- Navigate to the Plugins  and then go to Add new

- In the search box, search the ‘Classic Widgets’

- Install and activate it.

Installing Disable Gutenberg Plugin

In How To Disable Widget Blocks In WordPress, Disable Gutenberg plugin is a famous plugin and is widely used since WordPress launched the block editor for posts/pages. This plugin offers you a few settings and you can apply those settings as per your needs. Thanks to this plugin, you can also remove the Widget Blocks or block editore (Gutenberg editor) completely from WordPress.

To disable the Widget blocks with this plugin, follow the steps given below:

Steps:

- Install the Disable Gutenberg plugin and Activate it

- Now go to Settings > Disable Gutenberg

- There will be a setting for the Classic Widget checkbox. Now check this box and save  the changes.

- You are done!

See the below image for the settings section for the Complete disable as well as Classic Widget disable.

once you check the Complete Disable option, you will be able to disable Gutenberg editor from Posts and Pages. However, it will not disable from the widget screen.

In order to disable it from the widget screen, you just have to check the second option for Classic Widgets and this will disable the block editor from the widget screen.

Conclusion

In this article, we have seen any ways in which we can disable Widget Blocks in WordPress. You may either use the first two methods that involve codes or go for the easier methods that use plugins and has nothing to do with the coding part. Hope this article was useful to you in answering how to disable widget blocks in WordPress.

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