WordPress.org

Viktor Szépe

Rogier Lankhorst

Aert

Mark

pepe

Konstantinos Xenos

Mathieu Paapst

mujuonly

Aurooba Ahmed

Johan Holst Nielsen

WP Consent API is a plugin that standardizes the communication of accepted consent categories between plugins. It requires a cookie banner plugin and, at least, one other plugin that supports the WP Consent API.
With this plugin, all supporting plugins can use the same set of methods to read and register the current consent category, allowing consent management plugins and other plugins to work together, improving compliance with privacy laws.
WARNING: the plugin itself will not handle consent. It will show you how many plugins you have without Consent API support and will improve compliance on your site by ensuring smooth communication between cookie banner plugins and plugins that set cookies or track user data.
<h4>What problem does this plugin solve?</h4>
Currently, it is possible for a consent management plugin to block third-party services like Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter, etc. But if a WordPress plugin places a PHP cookie, a consent management plugin cannot prevent this.
Secondly, some plugins integrate the tracking code on the clientside in javascript files that, when blocked, break the site.
Or, if such a plugin’s javascript is minified, causing the URL to be unrecognizable and won’t get detected by an automatic blocking script.
Lastly, the blocking approach requires a list of all types of URL’s that tracks data. A generic API where plugins adhere to can greatly 
facilitate a webmaster in getting a site compliant.
<h4>Does usage of this API prevent third-party services from tracking user data?</h4>
Primary this API is aimed at compliant first-party cookies or tracking by WordPress plugins. If such a plugin triggers, for example, Facebook, 
usage of this API will be of help. If a user embeds a Facebook iframe, a blocking tool is needed that initially disables the iframe and or scripts.
Third-party scripts have to blocked by blocking functionality in a consent management plugin. To do this in core would be to intrusive, and is also not applicable to all users: only users with visitors from opt-in regions such as the European Union require such a feature. Such a feature also has a risk of breaking things. Additionally, blocking these and showing a nice placeholder requires even more sophisticated code, all of which should in my opinion not be part of WordPress core, for the same reasons.
<h4>How does it work?</h4>
There are two indicators that together tell if consent is given for a specific consent category, e.g., “marketing”: 
1) the region based consent_type, which 
can be opt-in, opt-out, or other possible consent_types; 
2) and the visitor’s choice: not set, allow, or deny.
The consent_type is a function that wraps a filter, “wp_get_consent_type”. If there’s no consent management plugin to set it, it will return false. This will cause all consent categories to return true, allowing cookies to be set on all categories.
If opt-in is set using this filter, a category will only return true if the value of the visitor’s choice is “allow”.
If the region based consent_type is opt-out, it will return true if the visitor’s choice is not set or is “allow”.
Clientside, a consent management plugin can dynamically manipulate the consent type and set several cookie categories.
A plugin can use a hook to listen for changes or check the value of a given category.
Categories and most other stuff can be extended with a filter.
<h3>Existing integrations</h3>
Categorized, and sorted alphabetically
<h4>Example plugin</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/rlankhorst/consent-api-example-plugin" rel="nofollow ugc">Example plugin</a>. The plugin basically consists of a shortcode, with a div that shows a tracking or not tracking message. No actual tracking is done 🙂</li>
</ul>
<h4>Consent Management Providers</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/sirdata-cmp/" rel="ugc">Abconsent Sirdata CMP</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/beautiful-and-responsive-cookie-consent/" rel="ugc">Beautiful Cookie Consent Banner</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/clickio-consent/" rel="ugc">Clickio Consent</a></li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/complianz-gdpr/" rel="ugc">Complianz GDPR/CCPA</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://consent.studio/" rel="nofollow ugc">Consent Studio</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/consent-manager/" rel="ugc">consentmanager</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://conzent.net/" rel="nofollow ugc">Conzent</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/cookiebot/" rel="ugc">Cookiebot</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/cookiefirst-gdpr-cookie-consent-banner/" rel="ugc">CookieFirst</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/cookiehub/" rel="ugc">CookieHub</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/cookietractor/" rel="ugc">CookieTractor</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/cookie-law-info/" rel="ugc">CookieYes – Cookie Banner for Cookie Consent</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gdpr-cookie-compliance/" rel="ugc">GDPR Cookie Compliance</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.webtoffee.com/product/gdpr-cookie-consent/" rel="nofollow ugc">GDPR Cookie Consent Plugin – CCPA Ready</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://getterms.io/consent-manager/" rel="nofollow ugc">GetTerms</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/iubenda-cookie-law-solution/" rel="ugc">iubenda | All-in-one Compliance</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/pressidium-cookie-consent/" rel="ugc">Pressidium Cookie Consent</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/trustarc-cookie-consent-manager/" rel="ugc">TrustArc Cookie Consent Manager</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Consent Requiring Plugins</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-to-any/" rel="ugc">AddToAny</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.appfromlab.com/product/woocommerce-utm-tracker-plugin/" rel="nofollow ugc">AFL UTM Tracker Plugin</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/burst-statistics/" rel="ugc">Burst Statistics</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-site-kit/" rel="ugc">Google Site Kit</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-google-adwords-conversion-tracking-tag/" rel="ugc">Pixel Manager for WooCommerce</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/" rel="ugc">Woo</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-statistics/" rel="ugc">WP Statistics</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Demo site</h3>
<a href="https://wpconsentapi.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">wpconsentapi.org</a> 
Below are the plugins used to set up the demo site:
<ul>
<li>Complianz</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/rlankhorst/consent-api-example-plugin" rel="nofollow ugc">The example plugin</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>javascript, consent management plugin</h4>
<pre><code>//set consent type
window.wp_consent_type = 'optin'

//dispatch event when consent type is defined. This is useful if the region is detected server side, so the consent type is defined later during the pageload
let event = new CustomEvent('wp_consent_type_defined');
document.dispatchEvent( event );


//consent management plugin sets cookie when consent category value changes
wp_set_consent('marketing', 'allow');
</code></pre>
<h4>javascript, tracking plugin</h4>
<pre><code>//listen to consent change event
document.addEventListener("wp_listen_for_consent_change", function (e) {
 var changedConsentCategory = e.detail;
 for (var key in changedConsentCategory) {
 if (changedConsentCategory.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
 if (key === 'marketing' && changedConsentCategory[key] === 'allow') {
 console.log("just given consent, track user")
 }
 }
 }
});

//basic implementation of consent check:
if (wp_has_consent('marketing')){
 activateMarketing();
 console.log("set marketing stuff now!");
} else {
 console.log("No marketing stuff please!");
}
</code></pre>
<h4>PHP</h4>
<pre><code>//declare compliance with consent level API
$plugin = plugin_basename( __FILE__ );
add_filter( "wp_consent_api_registered_{$plugin}", '__return_true' );

/**
* Example how a plugin can register cookies with the consent API
 * These cookies can then be shown on the front-end, to the user, with wp_get_cookie_info()
 */

function my_wordpress_register_cookies(){
 if ( function_exists( 'wp_add_cookie_info' ) ) {
 wp_add_cookie_info( 'AMP_token', 'AMP', 'marketing', __( 'Session' ), __( 'Store a unique User ID.' ) );
 }
}
add_action('plugins_loaded', 'my_wordpress_register_cookies');


if (wp_has_consent('marketing')){
//do marketing stuff
}
</code></pre>
<h4>Service-level consent</h4>
In addition to category-based consent, the API supports service-level consent control. This allows consent management plugins to grant or deny consent for specific services (like ‘google-analytics’ or ‘facebook-pixel’) independently from their category. When checking service consent with wp_has_service_consent(), the API first checks if explicit consent exists for that service. If no explicit consent is set, it falls back to the consent status of the service’s category. This enables fine-grained control: a user might accept statistics cookies in general, but explicitly deny a specific analytics service.
Service consent can be checked and set both server-side (PHP) and client-side (JavaScript):
PHP:
<pre><code>//check if a specific service has consent
if ( wp_has_service_consent( 'google-analytics' ) ) {
 //activate google analytics
}

//check if a service is explicitly denied
if ( wp_is_service_denied( 'facebook-pixel' ) ) {
 //service was explicitly denied by user
}

//set service consent
wp_set_service_consent( 'google-analytics', true ); //grant consent
wp_set_service_consent( 'facebook-pixel', false ); //deny consent

//listen for service consent changes
add_action( 'wp_consent_service_changed', function( $service, $consented ) {
 error_log( "Service {$service} consent changed to: " . ( $consented ? 'granted' : 'denied' ) );
}, 10, 2 );
</code></pre>
JavaScript:
<pre><code>//check service consent
if ( wp_has_service_consent( 'youtube' ) ) {
 //activate tracking
}

//check if explicitly denied
if ( wp_is_service_denied( 'facebook-pixel' ) ) {
 //service denied
}

//set service consent
wp_set_service_consent( 'youtube', true );

//listen for service consent changes
document.addEventListener( 'wp_consent_api_status_change_service', function( e ) {
 console.log( 'Service: ' + e.detail.service + ', consented: ' + e.detail.value );
});
</code></pre>
Any code suggestions? We’re on <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wp-consent-level-api" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a> as well!

WP Consent API


Louis was great helping me with an issue. Plugin works great and highly recommend!


Great Support Team


The wp‑consent‑api plugin provides a clean, standardized way to manage user consent across plugins and themes. It solves a core problem with a lightweight API. This is definitely a feature that should be integrated into WordPress core to ensure consistent and compliant consent handling by default.


Future of WP Consent Management

Simple Consent API to read and register the current consent category.

kam27d

PolicyDesk is a professional-grade cookie consent plugin for WordPress that helps you implement a clear cookie notice experience for GDPR/CCPA and other privacy requirements.
It includes multiple banner layouts (Banner, Box, Modal), a preferences modal for category-based choices (when enabled), a basic CCPA “Do not sell or share my personal information” option, and consent logging stored in cookies and your WordPress database.
Many cookie notice plugins stop at a simple banner. PolicyDesk focuses on flexible layouts, an accessible preference center, and admin tools to configure how consent is collected and stored. Additional advanced features may be available in PolicyDesk Pro (see the Premium Features section below).
<h3>Features</h3>
Consent Management
<ul>
<li>Cookie Consent Banner: Show a banner with Accept, Decline, and Preferences options.</li>
<li>Preference Center: Let visitors manage cookie preferences in a modal (by category, when enabled).</li>
<li>CCPA Opt-Out (basic): Includes a “Do not sell or share my personal information” option when CCPA settings are enabled.</li>
<li>Revisit Consent Button: Add a “Cookie Settings” button anywhere using the shortcode <code>[pdesk_cookie_settings]</code> (for example, in a footer or privacy page).</li>
<li>Consent Logging: Stores consent choices in cookies and records consent in your WordPress database.</li>
</ul>
Banner Customization
<ul>
<li>Layout Options: Choose Banner, Box, or Modal layouts.</li>
<li>Position Options: Display the banner at the top/bottom or as a centered modal (depending on layout).</li>
<li>Message & Labels: Customize banner text and labels from the settings page.</li>
</ul>
Cookie Management
<ul>
<li>Manual Cookie Management: Add, edit, and delete cookies in the admin Cookie Management section.</li>
</ul>
Multilingual & Accessibility
<ul>
<li>Multilingual Compatibility: Works with WPML and Polylang (when installed).</li>
<li>Auto-Translation: Optional auto-translation for common banner strings.</li>
<li>Accessibility: Keyboard support and accessibility-friendly modal behavior.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Premium Features</h3>
Access the following features by subscribing to a premium plan (Basic, Pro, or Agency). See all features and compare plans at https://policydesk.co
Advanced Consent Management
✅ Intentional Consent (3 equal buttons): “Accept None / Accept Some / Accept All” style consent flow. 
✅ Geolocation Options: Location-aware settings and messaging controls. 
✅ Google Consent Mode v2: Consent Mode integration options (when enabled).
Policy Tools & Automation
✅ Policy Generators: Privacy/Cookie policy generator tools (where available). 
✅ Automations: Additional automation options in Cookie Management (where available).
What Makes PolicyDesk Pro Different
✅ Intentional Consent Framework: 3 equal buttons (Accept None, Some, All). 
✅ Google Consent Mode v2: Consent Mode options (where available). 
✅ Cookie Scanner: Cookie scanning and categorization tools (where available). 
✅ Analytics Dashboard: Consent analytics and reporting tools (where available). 
✅ Automatic Script Blocking: Script blocking options (where available). 
✅ Default Configurations: One-click GDPR, CCPA, and Basic templates (where available).
Key Compliance Features (Premium)
<ul>
<li>GDPR-ready tools: Equal choice options (where available), granular consent controls (where enabled), consent duration controls, privacy-related content options, and consent record storage. (PolicyDesk provides tools to help with compliance, but does not guarantee compliance.)</li>
<li>CCPA-ready tools: “Do not sell or share my personal information” option and related consent controls (where enabled). (PolicyDesk provides tools to help with compliance, but does not guarantee compliance.)</li>
<li>Google Consent Mode v2: Consent Mode options for Google tags (where available).</li>
<li>Intentional Consent: 3 equal buttons (Accept None / Accept Some / Accept All) (where available).</li>
<li>Script Blocking: Script blocking options for third-party scripts (where available).</li>
<li>Cookie Scanner: Cookie detection and categorization tools (where available).</li>
<li>Analytics & Export: Consent analytics/reporting and export tools (where available).</li>
<li>Customization: Control colors, text, layout, position, and styling.</li>
<li>Accessibility: Keyboard support and accessibility-friendly modal behavior.</li>
</ul>

PolicyDesk – Cookie Banner for Cookie Consent (Easy to setup GDPR/CCPA Compliant Cookie Notice)

Cookie consent banner with preferences modal and multiple layouts for GDPR/CCPA cookie notice setup.

WP Consent API vs PolicyDesk – Cookie Banner for Cookie Consent (Easy to setup GDPR/CCPA Compliant Cookie Notice)