Dan Knauss

Maestro is an inline admin menu editor. Instead of a separate settings 
screen, it turns the WordPress admin menu into something you edit in place — 
right where it lives. Toggle Edit Menu from the admin bar and the menu 
becomes editable: click a label to rename it, drag rows to reorder, swap a 
top-level icon, or hide items from chosen roles.
Try it first. Launch a throwaway demo in 
<a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dknauss/Maestro/main/playground/blueprint-hosted.json" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress Playground</a> 
— it boots a site with Maestro active, User Switching, and test users (editor, 
author, contributor, subscriber; password <code>password</code>) so you can try per-role 
visibility by switching users before you install anything.
<h4>What you can do</h4>
<ul>
<li>Rename any top-level or submenu item — just click the label.</li>
<li>Reorder items by dragging (top-level items among themselves, submenu items 
within their parent), or with the keyboard (<code>Alt</code>+<code>Arrow</code>).</li>
<li>Swap icons on top-level items. The picker offers dashicons and bundled 
Bootstrap Icons with search, and accepts any of WordPress’s four native icon 
forms (dashicon, “none”, base64 image data-URI, or an image URL).</li>
<li>Hide items from chosen roles — including administrators. Custom roles 
registered by other plugins 
(<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-role-editor/" rel="ugc">User Role Editor</a>, 
<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/members/" rel="ugc">Members</a>, etc.) appear automatically.</li>
<li>Reset a single item to its WordPress default, or reset everything at once.</li>
</ul>
Changes are global — one configuration applies to everyone — and are stored 
as a sparse delta layered over the menu WordPress builds on each load. Nothing 
is rebuilt or duplicated, so a reset simply removes the delta and the original 
menu returns.
<h4>Important: visibility is cosmetic, not access control</h4>
Hiding a menu item only declutters the menu. The underlying admin page still 
loads for anyone who knows or types its URL, because a page’s own registered 
capability is the true lock. Maestro operates on the menu (presentation), 
which is a different plane from authorization.
If you need to actually prevent access, pair Maestro with a capability manager:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-role-editor/" rel="ugc">User Role Editor</a> — the 
simplest way to edit what a role can do.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/capability-manager-enhanced/" rel="ugc">PublishPress Capabilities</a> — 
menu-aware; its Pro tier can block admin pages by URL.</li>
</ul>
The <code>maestro_capability</code> filter lets such a plugin hand editing rights to a 
custom capability instead of the default <code>manage_options</code>.
<h4>Accessibility and localization</h4>
The editor is keyboard-operable end to end — select with <code>Enter</code>/<code>Space</code>, 
reorder with <code>Alt</code>+<code>Arrow</code>, and every move and save is announced to screen 
readers. Modified items carry a non-color indicator with screen-reader text, so 
state never depends on color alone.
Maestro uses the <code>maestro-menu-editor</code> text domain and ships a translation 
template plus starter language packs for Spanish (<code>es_ES</code>), German (<code>de_DE</code>), 
Japanese (<code>ja</code>), French (<code>fr_FR</code>), Portuguese – Brazil (<code>pt_BR</code>), and Italian 
(<code>it_IT</code>). WordPress.org language packs override and extend these; native-speaker 
and WordPress Polyglots review is welcome.
<h3>Architecture (for developers)</h3>
<ul>
<li><code>Config</code> — reads/writes/sanitizes a single option (<code>maestro_config</code>) holding only 
the deltas. Reset = delete the option; the natural menu returns automatically.</li>
<li><code>Replay</code> — on a late <code>admin_menu</code> pass, applies rename/icon/visibility to the 
 $menu/<code>$submenu</code> globals and reorders submenus. Top-level order uses the 
core <code>custom_menu_order</code> + <code>menu_order</code> filters. Resilient to missing slugs 
(orphans are skipped) and new items (appended at the end).</li>
<li><code>Rest</code> — <code>maestro/v1/config</code> (GET/POST/DELETE), capability-gated, <code>X-WP-Nonce</code>.</li>
<li>The editor JS is driven by a localized model (with DOM ids), not DOM scraping, 
and diffs against captured pristine defaults so the stored config stays sparse.</li>
<li>Localized editor labels are passed from PHP to JavaScript in <code>maestroData.i18n</code>; 
the runtime zip includes the bundled POT template and starter catalogs.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Known limits / deferred to v2</h3>
<ul>
<li>Reparenting (moving an item between a top-level position and a submenu) is 
not included. Top-level items reorder among top-level items and submenu items 
reorder within their current parent. Reparenting needs hand-splicing of the 
globals plus <code>parent_file</code>/<code>submenu_file</code> highlighting fixes — a known 
minefield, parked deliberately.</li>
<li>Separators are preserved in place but not yet add/move/delete-able; their 
generated slugs (<code>separator1</code>…) have no stable identity to key against.</li>
<li>Renaming an item drops any core-appended count badge (e.g. pending 
comments) from that label, since the badge lives inside the title string.</li>
<li>Submenu sort relies on items registering by the late <code>admin_menu</code> pass; a 
plugin that registers submenus on an unusually late hook may not be captured.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Credits</h3>
Bundled <a href="https://icons.getbootstrap.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Bootstrap Icons</a> are © The Bootstrap 
Authors, licensed under the MIT License. They are recoloured to the WordPress 
menu grey and embedded as data-URIs; see <code>bin/generate-bootstrap-icons.mjs</code>.
<h3>Support This Plugin</h3>
If Maestro saves you time, you can support its ongoing maintenance through 
<a href="https://github.com/sponsors/dknauss" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub Sponsors</a>.

Maestro: The Inline Admin Menu Editor

Rename, reorder, re-icon, and hide WordPress admin menu items per role — an inline admin menu editor you drive right on the menu itself.

Mahfuzur Rahman

This plugin allows you to control menu item visibility based on user roles and login status. You can:
<ol>
<li>Hide menu items from specific user roles (original functionality)</li>
<li>Show menu items only to specific user roles (new “show” mode)</li>
<li>Control visibility based on login status (Everyone, Logged-in only, Logged-out only)</li>
</ol>
The plugin uses WordPress core filters, so no JavaScript or jQuery is required.

Hide Menu Items by Role

An enhanced WordPress plugin to hide or show menu items based on user roles and login status.

Maestro: The Inline Admin Menu Editor vs Hide Menu Items by Role