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Plugin info

Total downloads: 1,024,494
Active installs: 60,000
Total reviews: 107
Average rating: 5
Support threads opened: 0
Support threads resolved: 0 (0%)
Available in: 22 language(s)
Contributors: 2
Last updated: 2/16/2025 (318 days ago)
Added to WordPress: 3/22/2015 (10 years old)
Minimum WordPress version: 4.8
Tested up to WordPress version: 6.8.3
Minimum PHP version: f

Maintenance & Compatibility

Maintenance score

Stale • Last updated 318 days ago • 107 reviews

47/100

Is Disable Emojis (GDPR friendly) abandoned?

Likely maintained (last update 318 days ago).

Compatibility

Requires WordPress: 4.8
Tested up to: 6.8.3
Requires PHP: f

Ratings

106
0
0
0
1See all reviews

Developers

Ryan Hellyer (Owner)15Ryan Hellyer3

Languages

Spanish (Spain)32,360Dutch30,206French (France)20,849German19,853Spanish (Venezuela)17,048Swedish14,890Japanese14,019Spanish (Mexico)13,287Czech10,389English (UK)9,973German (Formal)9,953English (Canada)8,372Spanish (Chile)8,024English (South Africa)4,595Hungarian4,022Galician4,008Spanish (Argentina)2,798Hebrew2,714Serbian1,926Tibetan134Kurdish (Kurmanji)8

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Description

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

After you’ve downloaded and extracted the files:

  1. Upload the complete ‘disable-emojis’ folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory OR install via the plugin installer
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. And yer done!

Visit the Disable Emojis plugin for more information.

Frequently Asked Questions

No FAQ available

Review feed

arena
1/9/2019

another remove filter to add to the too long list !

should add this one as well ! remove_action( 'embed_head', 'print_emoji_detection_script' );
Roy Orbitson
11/19/2019

Clean

No configuration needed. No ads. Does the job.
TraceMyIP
6/9/2025

Clean Up Your Site & Improve GDPR Compliance

Disable Emojis by Ryan Hellyer is a gem! With 60k+ active installs and nearly perfect 5-star rating, it's clearly doing something right. This lightweight plugin strips out WordPress's bloated emoji code while keeping your content looking great in modern browsers. The GDPR-friendly bonus is huge - it stops DNS prefetching to external emoji servers, protecting visitor privacy. Ryan's been maintaining this for years and it shows. Your site loads faster, stays compliant, and emojis still work naturally. Win-win-win!
Jason LeMahieu (MadtownLems)
9/22/2025

Small but mighty

It's so rare to find a plugin these days that has no bloat, no upsells, no ANYTHING beyond exactly what's needed to get the job done. Thank you!

Screenshots

No screenshots available

Changelog

1.7.7

  • Confirmed support for newer WordPress versions.

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.

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