Disable Emojis
This plugin disables the new WordPress emoji functionality. GDPR friendly.
Note: Emoticons will still work and emojis will still work in browsers which have built in support for them. This plugin simply removes the extra code bloat used to add support for emojis in older browsers.
GDPR compliancy
This plugin does not do anything to make your site less GDPR compliant. It disables the DNS prefetching of emojis within WordPress, which should ensure improved privacy. To determine if your site is GDPR compliant, please seek legal advice. I have done my best to ensure the plugin is 100% GDPR compliant, but I am not a lawyer so can not guarantee anything 😉
Installation
Download the Disable Emojis (GDPR friendly) plugin.
After you’ve downloaded and extracted the files:
- Upload the complete ‘disable-emojis’ folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory OR install via the plugin installer
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- And yer done!
Visit the Disable Emojis plugin for more information.
Changelog
1.7.6
- Confirmed support for newer WordPress versions.
1.7.5
- Added Composer support.
1.7.4
- Fixing typos.
1.7.3
- Unneeded version bump to shut the WordPress.org notice up.
1.7.2
- Subtle improvement to code cleanliness.
- Improved documentation regarding GDPR issues.
1.7.1
- Added GDPR friendly label on advice from Ipstenu.
1.7
- Removed DNS prefetch URL again.
- This time using simple string check rather than relying on internal WordPress filters.
1.6
- Removed DNS prefetch URL. Props to Aaron Queen for assisting with this.
1.5.3
- Catering to new DNS prefetch URL in version 4.7 of core
1.5.2
- Improved documentation.
- Removed redundant dns prefetching. Thanks to Milan Dinic for the pull request.
1.5.1
- Updating documentation.
1.5
- Catering for invalid $plugin array.
1.4
- Updating to use Otto’s code.
1.3
Removing extraneous styles.
1.2
Bug fix.
1.1
Updating to work with latest beta.
1.0
Initial release.
More information regarding why to use this plugin can be found on the post Emoji’s in WordPress 4.2.
Piet says:
plugin doesn\’t work anymore
April 5, 2015 at 1:05 pm # //
Ryan says:
Yeah, I noticed that. Apparently something changed in core recently. I’m currently debating between fixing it, or just recommending people use another plugin which Otto made which almost does the same thing.
April 5, 2015 at 2:29 pm # //
Ryan says:
This problem has now been fixed, ready for the stable release of WordPress 4.2.
April 22, 2015 at 8:07 pm # //
Nikola says:
Why using various plugins when you can just add:
remove_action( \’wp_head\’, \’print_emoji_detection_script\’, 7 );
remove_action( \’wp_print_styles\’, \’print_emoji_styles\’ );
to your themes functions.php file?
August 19, 2015 at 11:42 am # //
Ryan says:
Because that doesn’t remove all references to the emojis. Plus, if anything changes in WordPress core relating to emojis, then you would need to go through and update every individual theme you used that code on.
August 19, 2015 at 11:46 am # //
Bryan says:
Thank you, Ryan!!! I\’ve been using FacetWP for a long time and could not figure out what was slowing down IE and Chrome. You\’re plug-in has sped things up at least 2x.
Bryan
August 20, 2015 at 4:10 am # //
Ryan says:
Interesting. I’m not sure how FacetWP would have been affected by that, but good to hear it helped.
August 20, 2015 at 7:54 am # //
Cliff R says:
This seems to have stopped working on WP 4.3? See here:
http://www.iphemeris.com/about-the-author/
Any thoughts?
August 26, 2015 at 3:50 pm # //
Ryan says:
It seems to be working just fine on your site. Is it possible you misunderstood what it does? Some people get confused between the new emoji functionality added to WordPress, and emoticons, or the presence of emoji on their site (which is not necessarily controlled by WordPress). The plugin removes the emoji functionality that was added in WordPress 4.2, which is unrelated to emoticons or your ability to use emoji on your site. The extra functionality was for adding support in older browsers, and emoticons are unrelated since they’re not actually emoji.
August 26, 2015 at 9:31 pm # //
Cliff R says:
Hi Thanks for the response. Apparently I did misunderstand. My issue is with the conversion of 🙂 to a smiley face graphic. How does one stop that?!
August 27, 2015 at 1:56 pm # //
Cliff R says:
Never mind, I see there is a WordPress admin setting for that…. which I cannot find. Possibly my Theme has disabled that. Hmmmmm.
August 27, 2015 at 1:58 pm # //
Ryan says:
You should be able to see that at wp-admin/options-writing.php. That seems like an odd thing for a theme to disable.
August 27, 2015 at 7:09 pm # //
Tom says:
this plugin doesn\’t work anymore in WP 4.2 not with the 🙂 at least.
emoji settings by Sybre Waaijer works though.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/emoji-settings/
August 31, 2015 at 12:08 pm # //
Ryan says:
It definitely works with WordPress 4.2. I suspect the problem you are experiencing is the same as the one here … https://geek.hellyer.kiwi/plugins/disable-emojis/#comment-229979
August 31, 2015 at 4:37 pm # //
Mark says:
wappalyzer still detects emojis after installing this plugin.
March 4, 2016 at 8:12 pm # //
Ryan says:
That’s probably because you are using emoji’s. The plugin disables the extra support added for emoji’s within WordPress. It doesn’t disable emoji’s in general.
March 13, 2016 at 3:06 pm # //
Mehdi Achour says:
Hey,
This does not seem to work anymore with latest WP version.
Compared to Emoji Settings, you are missing this code :
if ( get_site_option( ‘initial_db_version’ ) >= 32453 ) {
remove_action( ‘init’, ‘smilies_init’, 5 ); // This removes the ascii to smiley convertion
}
Maybe it’s time to deprecate this extension? (I lost quiet some time with this one before finding the other :-/ )
Thanks a lot for sharing your plugin !
July 5, 2016 at 5:57 pm # //
Ryan says:
I’m not aware of any other plugin for this. Which one are you referring to?
July 6, 2016 at 7:06 am # //
Ryan says:
I found the one you are referring to, but that is identical to this plugin, as it in fact uses all of the code from this plugin.
The section of code you referred to is not related to emoji’s at all. That is for stripping smiley code, which has nothing to do with emoji’s.
The other plugin also adds a tick box to the admin panel, for turning on and off the plugins functionality, which is totally pointless for most people. I would have done that by making an extension plugins specific to multisite network enabled environments which added a checkbox to the settings page, which simply activated the disable-emojis plugin rather than bundling it.
So no, I don’t think it is appropriate to deprecate this one at all. That wouldn’t make much sense and would annoy a lot of people, particularly as I don’t think there is any valid replacement for it.
July 6, 2016 at 7:14 am # //
Joe says:
Hi Ryan,
Your plug in worked well for me, so thanks.
Once the plugin has done its work, will the changes remain if I disable and delete the plug in?
Joe
June 13, 2017 at 11:36 pm # //
Ryan says:
No, it does not remove anything from the site permanently.
June 14, 2017 at 7:54 am # //
Joe says:
Ok, so to make sure I read you correctly, I’ll have to keep the plug-in installed to keep the changes it made, right?
Disable Emojis helped me with webpage speed, so thanks again.
June 14, 2017 at 8:55 pm # //
Ryan says:
Yep, you need to keep the plugin installed for that. As soon as you disable the plugin, all changes will immediately be reversed. All the plugin does is unhook the emoji stuff added by WordPress. It’s not possible to permanently disable that functionality.
June 14, 2017 at 10:20 pm # //
Sanela Haas says:
Hi,
the plugin works on the desktop but on mobile it still show me the emojis. Any idea why?
Best regards,
Sanela
May 8, 2018 at 9:03 pm # //
Ryan Hellyer says:
The plugin does not remove the emoji’s, but removes the built in support for emoji’s within WordPress. If the browser supports emoji’s by default, then they’ll still show up.
May 9, 2018 at 4:25 pm # //
Andreas says:
Hi Ryan.
I like your disable emojis plugin. You haven’t updated it for a long time. It seems to work fine with WP up to 5.3.2 as far as I can tell. Could you perhaps bump up compatibility in the WordPress plugin repository, maybe by publishing a new version like 1.7.2a or something.
Thanks a log for providing this plugin as open source!
Regards
Andreas
March 7, 2020 at 6:16 pm # //
Ryan Hellyer says:
Oops. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll bump it up 🙂
March 8, 2020 at 7:36 pm # //
Damir says:
cool plugin
thx
russia 🙂
October 4, 2020 at 7:21 am # //
WJ says:
Ahoy,
the last update is 8 month old and not “compatible” with the latest version of wordpress.
If you find the time, it would be great.
Cheers
October 20, 2020 at 1:10 pm # //
Ryan Hellyer says:
The compatibility version number has now been bumped. THanks for letting me know about the problem 🙂
October 21, 2020 at 1:02 pm # //
Chris says:
Great plugin, thanks a lot! Would you mind bumping this once more for WP5.5 as it’s showing up as “not tested for our version” (which results in our service provider refusing to install it).
October 20, 2020 at 1:46 pm # //
Ryan Hellyer says:
Yep, I’ll upgrade it shortly for you. Thanks for letting me know.
October 21, 2020 at 12:58 pm # //
Ryan Hellyer says:
The compatibility version number has now been bumped.
October 21, 2020 at 1:02 pm # //
kamal says:
Hi
This plugin is great. But when I use this, some emojies get larger and covers whole page. I cannot remove them by search and replace. Apprently, they have been pasted as images.
There are plenty of them and I do not have time to edit each post to remove them. Do you have any solution for that?
For example the green check emoji in this page:
https://applytalkshow.com/4883/usa/
Thanks again
July 6, 2023 at 9:31 pm # //