Let’s talk about emojis in WordPress. We use them sometimes in texts and social media, but they’re not always right for every website. We’ve built lots of business sites where it made more sense to remove them completely.
Also, here’s something most people don’t know: WordPress loads emoji scripts on every single page. That’s extra code you might not even need! We’ve helped thousands of site owners speed up their websites, and getting rid of unused features like emojis often makes things run faster.
We’ll show you the easiest ways to turn off WordPress emojis today. Whether you prefer using a plugin or adding a quick code snippet, we’ve tested every method so you don’t have to.
Why Disable Emojis in WordPress?
While emojis are popular for adding expression to content, they can often look unprofessional on business websites. What’s more, they come with performance costs on your WordPress site.
Every time someone visits your site, WordPress loads extra JavaScript files and CSS just to handle emoji support. This feature was added in WordPress 4.2 mainly to support Chinese, Japanese, and Korean character sets.
You can spot these extra resources by viewing your website’s source code or using the Inspect tool:
By disabling these extra resources, you can maintain a more professional appearance and help improve your WordPress site’s speed and performance.
Note: Disabling emoji support in WordPress only removes the extra scripts – it doesn’t prevent you from using emojis. Browsers that support emojis will still display them correctly on your site.
Having said that, let’s take a look at how to easily disable emoji support in WordPress.
Method 1. Disabling Emojis in WordPress Using Code
For this method, we’ll be using a custom code snippet to disable emoji support in WordPress.
You can add this code snippet to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin. However, a tiny error in the code could easily break your website and make it inaccessible.
To avoid this, we recommend using WPCode. It is the best WordPress code snippets plugin on the market that offers the safest way to add custom code to your site without breaking it.
First, you need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more instructions, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After activation, visit the Code Snippets » + Add Snippet page from the WordPress admin dashboard. From here, go to the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option and click the ‘+ Add Custom Snippet’ button.
This will bring you to the ‘Create Custom Snippet’ page.
Here, select ‘PHP Snippet’ as your ‘Code Type.’
Next, you can start by typing a name for your code snippet.
It can be anything you like.
Now, all you have to do is copy and paste the following code in the ‘Code Preview’ box:
/**
* Disable the emoji’s
*/
function disable_emojis() {
remove_action( ‘wp_head’, ‘print_emoji_detection_script’, 7 );
remove_action( ‘admin_print_scripts’, ‘print_emoji_detection_script’ );
remove_action( ‘wp_print_styles’, ‘print_emoji_styles’ );
remove_action( ‘admin_print_styles’, ‘print_emoji_styles’ );
remove_filter( ‘the_content_feed’, ‘wp_staticize_emoji’ );
remove_filter( ‘comment_text_rss’, ‘wp_staticize_emoji’ );
remove_filter( ‘wp_mail’, ‘wp_staticize_emoji_for_email’ );
add_filter( ‘tiny_mce_plugins’, ‘disable_emojis_tinymce’ );
add_filter( ‘wp_resource_hints’, ‘disable_emojis_remove_dns_prefetch’, 10, 2 );
}
add_action( ‘init’, ‘disable_emojis’ );
/**
* Filter function used to remove the tinymce emoji plugin.
*
* @param array $plugins
* @return array Difference betwen the two arrays
*/
function disable_emojis_tinymce( $plugins ) {
if ( is_array( $plugins ) ) {
return array_diff( $plugins, array( ‘wpemoji’ ) );
} else {
return array();
}
}
/**
* Remove emoji CDN hostname from DNS prefetching hints.
*
* @param array $urls URLs to print for resource hints.
* @param string $relation_type The relation type the URLs are printed for.
* @return array Difference betwen the two arrays.
*/
function disable_emojis_remove_dns_prefetch( $urls, $relation_type ) {
if ( ‘dns-prefetch’ == $relation_type ) {
/** This filter is documented in wp-includes/formatting.php */
$emoji_svg_url = apply_filters( ’emoji_svg_url’, ‘https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/svg/’ );
$urls = array_diff( $urls, array( $emoji_svg_url ) );
}
return $urls;
}
After that, scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section and select the ‘Auto Insert’ mode.
The code will now be automatically executed on your site upon activation.
After that, go back to the top and toggle the switch on the right from ‘Inactive’ to ‘Active’.
Finally, click the ‘Save Snippet’ button to store your changes.
That’s all, you have successfully disabled emojis in WordPress.
Method 2. Disable Emojis in WordPress Using a Plugin
If you don’t want to add code to your website, then this method is for you.
First, you need to install and activate the Disable Emojis plugin. See our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin for more instructions.
The plugin works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.
Upon activation, it will automatically disable emoji support from your WordPress site, which will improve page load speed.
Bonus Tip: Add Reaction Buttons to Your WordPress Posts
Even after disabling emoji support, you may wish to allow users to react to your posts and share their opinions through reaction buttons.
These buttons can boost engagement on your WordPress blog and increase user interaction.
To do this, you need to install and activate the Da Reactions plugin. For details, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, visit the Reactions » Reactions manager page from your WordPress dashboard. Here, you will find the 6 default reaction emojis with their customizable labels.
You can now reorder the buttons, assign labels to them, change emoji color, delete an emoji, and more.
You can even add other emojis of your choice by clicking the ‘Add new’ button at the end. The plugin will then add a random reaction icon to the list.
Next, click on this icon to open the options panel. From here, you can now choose a new emoji of your liking.
Once you are done, simply click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
Now, visit your WordPress site to view the reaction buttons in action. For more information, see our tutorial on how to add WordPress reaction buttons to boost engagement.
We hope this article helped you learn how to disable Emojis on your WordPress site. You may also want to check out our step-by-step guide on how to add a parallax effect to any WordPress theme and our top picks for the best page builder plugins to customize your site.
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