How to Add/Remove Admin Bar Links in WordPress

Are you looking for a way to add a new link to WordPress admin bar and remove an existing link? While there’s probably a plugin for this, we have created a quick code snippet that you can use to add/remove admin bar links in WordPress.

Here are some IDs for the default links WP 3.1 adds, found in /wp-includes/admin-bar.php:

my-account / my-account-with-avatar : the first link, to your account. Note that the ID here changes depending on if you have Avatars enabled or not.
my-blogs : the ‘My Sites’ menu if the user has more than one site
get-shortlink : provides a Shortlink to that page
edit : link to Edit [content-type]
new-content : the ‘Add New’ dropdown
comments : the ‘Comments’ dropdown
appearance : the ‘Appearance’ dropdown
updates : the ‘Updates’ dropdown

Instructions:

All you have to do is add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin:

function mytheme_admin_bar_render() {
    global $wp_admin_bar;
    // we can remove a menu item, like the Comments link, just by knowing the right $id
    $wp_admin_bar->remove_menu('comments');
    // or we can remove a submenu, like New Link.
    $wp_admin_bar->remove_menu('new-link', 'new-content');
    // we can add a submenu item too
    $wp_admin_bar->add_menu( array(
        'parent' => 'new-content',
        'id' => 'new_media',
        'title' => __('Media'),
        'href' => admin_url( 'media-new.php')
    ) );
}
// and we hook our function via
add_action( 'wp_before_admin_bar_render', 'mytheme_admin_bar_render' );

Note: If this is your first time adding code snippets in WordPress, then please refer to our guide on how to properly add code snippets in WordPress, so you don’t accidentally break your site.

If you liked this code snippet, please consider checking out our other articles on the site like: 6 best image optimization plugins for WordPress and how to set up Shopify with WordPress.