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How To Restrict Or Disable Blocks In The WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg)

Last Updated on March 27th, 2023

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The WordPress block editor named Gutenberg while under development – brings with it a ton of new blocks (hence the name!).

Beyond the 34+ default blocks, third-party plugins can also add their own blocks for you to use in your designs.

All that means that you might be looking at potentially hundreds of blocks when you go to create content with the new Gutenberg block editor. Talk about clutter!

To help you get a better handle on those blocks, I’m going to show you how to remove blocks in WordPress. You can either disable blocks for all users. Or, you can disable Gutenberg blocks for specific user roles, user accounts, on certain post types, etc.

Some potential use cases for the strategies in this post are:

  • Streamlining the block editor interface by removing blocks that you’ll never use. Essentially – less clutter.
  • Restricting what types of content that other users can create. For example, if you have third-party authors at your site, you might not want them to be able to include a payment block or something. Or, if you’re building client sites, you might not want to let them use all the blocks.
  • Limiting what type of content can be included in a specific post type. For example, you might only need a certain set of basic blocks for a certain post type.

Ready to dive in? Here’s how to disable Gutenberg blocks or restrict access to blocks based on user roles or user accounts. I’ll start with two simple plugins that let you do it. Then, I’ll dig into how to do it with your own code.

Note – if you want to completely disable the new editor and keep using the older TinyMCE editor, check out our full post on how to disable the new WordPress Gutenberg block editor.

Disabling Gutenberg Blocks From a Website’s Admin Panel

The fastest and easiest way to disable or hide blocks in WordPress is by utilizing its built-in features.

disabling gutenberg blocks from a website’s admin panel

All you need to do is go to your site’s dashboard, open the Posts menu, and click the Vertical Ellipsis icon (three-dot icon) next to a post. Choose the Edit option from the menu. Once the Gutenberg Block Editor window loads, you should click on the Ellipsis icon in the upper right corner. Scroll down to the bottom of the menu and choose the Preferences option.

disabling gutenberg blocks from a website’s admin panel step 2

The Preferences window will pop up on the screen. Open the Blocks tab and find the Visible Blocks section. 

You’ll see the ‘Disable blocks that you don’t want to appear in the inserter, they can always be toggled back on later’ message in this section.

disabling gutenberg blocks from a website’s admin panel step 3

Proceed to uncheck all tick boxes next to blocks you don’t want to use. The number of blocks you hide will be displayed at the top of the Preferences window.

disabling gutenberg blocks from a website’s admin panel step 4

Close this window when done, then open another post in the Gutenberg Block Editor and use the block inserter to check if you successfully disabled blocks you don’t want to use.

How to Remove a Block in WordPress Gutenberg Editor With a Plugin

There are a few different plugins that purport to help you disable Gutenberg blocks, but I like the free Advanced Gutenberg plugin from JoomUnited, which I reviewed here a few months ago, and the Gutenberg Block Manager, which is a more lightweight option. I’ll show you how to use both.

Advanced Gutenberg Plugin Guide

Advanced Gutenberg lets you create different profiles that define which blocks are available. To globally disable blocks, you can assign the profile to all users. Or, you can also create separate profiles for individual users or user roles to change which blocks are available depending on who’s using the editor.

Advanced Gutenberg also adds its own set of blocks, but you can disable those if desired.

Step 1: Create A New Profile

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin from WordPress.org, go to the new Adv. Gutenberg tab in your WordPress dashboard and click New Profile:

advanced gutenberg plugin guide - how to delete a block in wordpress

Then, give your profile a name and click save:

advanced gutenberg plugin guide - hide blocks in wordpress

Step 2: Choose Which User(s) Profile Applies To

Next, go to the Profile Attribution area. This area will let you choose which users will use this profile.

You can either choose specific:

  • User accounts
  • User roles

Or, you can do both:

profile attribution - how to remove blocks in wordpress

If you want to disable Gutenberg blocks for every single user at your site, you can just select all of the user roles to apply this profile globally.

Step 3: Choose Which Blocks To Disable

To choose which blocks are available to users with this profile, go to the Blocks List. By default, all of the blocks are enabled. However, by using the simple toggle buttons, you can disable as many blocks as desired.

Beyond picking up the default blocks and its own blocks, Advanced Gutenberg will also show blocks from other third-party plugins. All of the blocks are divided into the same sections that you see in the Block Inserter while using the editor.

For example, here’s what it looks like to disable some blocks from the third-party Stackable plugin:

blocks list - wordpress hide block

And that’s it! Once you’ve saved your changes, users to which the profile applies will only see the blocks that are still activated.

Gutenberg Block Manager Plugin Guide

This free and lightweight WordPress plugin doesn’t have a lot of users, which is surprising considering its functionalities. 

Essentially, the Gutenberg Block Manager plugin lets users disable and enable blocks globally. This means you can use it to deactivate entire block categories, rather than individual blocks. 

The plugin features a search bar, so you don’t have to browse endlessly to find a block you want to disable. Its Category Switcher functionality enables you to change a block’s category. 

In addition, it features a gbm_disabled_blocks filter hook that allows you to control the status of Gutenberg blocks in multiple WordPress environments.

Disabling Blocks with the Gutenberg Block Manager Plugin

The first step is to install the plugin. As I mentioned earlier, the plugin is free, so you can just navigate to the Plugins menu on your dashboard, type its name in the search bar, and hit Enter. 

Click the Install button once the plugin appears in the search results and the Activate button after the installation is completed. 

The plugin’s menu will be added to your dashboard. You’ll see the list of all Gutenberg categories available on the WordPress version you’re using in the upper right corner of the Gutenberg Block Manager’s tab. 

Optionally, you can scroll down to see different block categories. Each category has its own tab and a toggle button in the upper right corner of the tab. Clicking on this button will disable an entire block category.

disabling blocks with the gutenberg block manager plugin

However, each block within a certain category has a toggle button that allows you to disable it so you can deactivate individual blocks instead of a category. The Category Switcher feature is easy to use, as you just have to go to the Category tab in the Manage menu, select a block and assign it to a new category.

How to Delete a Block in WordPress Gutenberg Editor With Your Own Code

If you don’t want to use a plugin to disable Gutenberg editor blocks, you can also do things manually with your own code using the allowed_block_types filter.

For this method, you can add the code to your child theme’s functions.php or you can use a plugin like Code Snippets to manage the code. Or, you can even create your own custom plugin if that’s more your style!

With this method, you’re choosing which blocks you want to be enabled. So rather than listing out the blocks that you want to disable, you just only include the blocks that you do want to enable, and all the other blocks will be disabled.

Here’s the base code snippet that you’ll use:

function my_allowed_block_types( $allowed_block_types, $post ) {
return array(
'core/paragraph'
);
}
add_filter( 'allowed_block_types', 'my_allowed_block_types');

With this example, you’d only be able to use the paragraph block – all others would be disabled.

To enable more blocks, you just add the block slugs to the array like so:

function my_allowed_block_types( $allowed_block_types, $post ) {
return array(
'core/paragraph',
'core/image',
'core/heading',
'ugb/button'
);
}
add_filter( 'allowed_block_types', 'my_allowed_block_types');

To find the block slugs that you need to include in the array, you can use the Gutenberg code editor. For example, the block slug for Stackable’s Button block is ugb/button:

gutenberg code editor - how to remove a block in wordpress

If you want, you can also further modify this base code snippet to target specific post types using if rules.

Final Thoughts On Disabling Gutenberg Blocks

If you don’t like sorting through all the many available Gutenberg blocks, or if you just want to restrict which blocks certain users have access to, any of these methods should work.

Advanced Gutenberg is the easiest to use if you want to restrict access to Gutenberg blocks based on user roles or user accounts.

But if you just want to globally disable certain blocks, all three solutions make that pretty simple, with Disable Gutenberg Blocks or your own custom code offering the most lightweight solutions.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to remove a block from a post in WordPress?

Choose a block and click the three dots in the top right corner. After this, click on the Remove block. If other blocks are nested inside it, they will be removed too.

How do I disable Gutenberg blocks in WordPress?

To disable blocks in the WordPress block editor, you can utilize various plugins like Gutenberg Blocks and Block Manager. Install these plugins, and you can efficiently remove blocks in a few steps.


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