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How to Disable the Unneeded Gutenberg Blocks in WordPress

Gutenberg comes with over 70 default widgets. While some blocks like Heading, Paragraph, and Image are essentials, you might never use blocks like Verse, Audio, and social media blocks on the Embed category. Since version 5.2, WordPress has allowed you to disable the unneeded Gutenberg blocks via Block Manager.

Before version 5.2 was released, you could only disable Gutenberg blocks via custom function by editing the functions.php file of your theme. Disabling the default Gutenberg blocks is especially crucial if you use plugins like Kadence Blocks and Stackable to keep your work environment uncluttered.

To access Block Manager, you can click the three-dot icon on the upper-right corner on the Gutenberg screen and select Preferences. If you can’t see it, you can zoom-out the page (by pressing the Ctrl key and the key if you are a Windows and Linux user).

On the appearing window, click the Blocks tab on the left side and uncheck the blocks you don’t need. Close the window once you are done disabling the unneeded blocks.

That’s it. You can now work with Gutenberg more comfortably with the simplified blocks. Again, Block Manager is only available on WordPress 5.2 and the newer versions. You can check the WordPress version on your site by clicking the WordPress icon on the top-left corner and select About WordPress.

Another Option to Disable the Default Gutenberg Blocks

As we mentioned above, on WordPress version 5.0 and 5.1, you could only disable the default Gutenberg blocks via custom function by editing the functions.php of the theme you use. This method still works on WordPress 5.2 and the newer versions.

Here is the example of the code you can add to the functions.php file of your theme. You can simply place the following code right after the last line of the fucntions.php content.

add_filter( 'allowed_block_types', 'misha_allowed_block_types' );
 
function misha_allowed_block_types( $allowed_blocks ) {
 
	return array(
		'core/image',
		'core/paragraph',
		'core/heading',
		'core/list'
	);
 
}

The code above allows only four blocks on the Gutenberg editor (Image, Paragraph, Heading, and List). To allow more blocks, you can add ones inside the return array parentheses. Here is the result after you add the code above.

Following is the list of the default Gutenberg blocks you can add:

  • core/paragraph
  • core/image
  • core/heading
  • core/gallery
  • core/list
  • core/quote
  • core/audio
  • core/cover
  • core/file
  • core/video
  • core/table
  • core/verse
  • core/code
  • core/freeform (Classic Editor)
  • core/html
  • core/preformatted
  • core/pullquote
  • core/buttons
  • core/text-columns
  • core/media-text
  • core/more
  • core/nextpage
  • core/separator
  • core/spacer
  • core/shortcode
  • core/archives
  • core/categories
  • core/latest-comments
  • core/latest-posts
  • core/calendar
  • core/rss
  • core/search
  • core/tag-cloud
  • core/embed
  • core-embed/twitter
  • core-embed/youtube
  • core-embed/facebook
  • core-embed/instagram
  • core-embed/wordpress
  • core-embed/soundcloud
  • core-embed/spotify
  • core-embed/flickr
  • core-embed/vimeo
  • core-embed/animoto
  • core-embed/cloudup
  • core-embed/collegehumor
  • core-embed/dailymotion
  • core-embed/funnyordie
  • core-embed/hulu
  • core-embed/imgur
  • core-embed/issuu
  • core-embed/kickstarter
  • core-embed/meetup-com
  • core-embed/mixcloud
  • core-embed/photobucket
  • core-embed/polldaddy
  • core-embed/reddit
  • core-embed/reverbnation
  • core-embed/screencast
  • core-embed/scribd
  • core-embed/slideshare
  • core-embed/smugmug
  • core-embed/speaker
  • core-embed/ted
  • core-embed/tumblr
  • core-embed/videopress
  • core-embed/wordpress-tv

Here is an example of the placement of the code above.

In case you didn’t how you how to edit the functions.php file of your theme. Go to Appearance -> Theme Editor on your WordPress dashboard. Select your theme on the Select theme to edit dropdown and click the functions.php file on the Theme Files panel on the right side.

Make sure to click the Update File button once you are done editing the file.

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