How To Remove Meta Boxes From the Post and Page Editors

Are you looking for a way to remove meta boxes from the post and page editors? This snippet will remove all of the meta boxes from the post and page editors.

Instructions:

All you have to do is add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin. Optionally comment out the lines for the meta boxes that you would like to keep.

function remove_meta_boxes() {
  # Removes meta from Posts #
  remove_meta_box('postexcerpt','post','normal' ); 
  remove_meta_box('postcustom','post','normal');
  remove_meta_box('trackbacksdiv','post','normal');
  remove_meta_box('commentstatusdiv','post','normal');
  remove_meta_box('commentsdiv','post','normal');
  # Removes meta from pages #
  remove_meta_box('postexcerpt','page','normal'); // optionally use this if page excerpts are enabled
  remove_meta_box('postcustom','page','normal');
  remove_meta_box('trackbacksdiv','page','normal');
  remove_meta_box('commentstatusdiv','page','normal');
  remove_meta_box('commentsdiv','page','normal');
}
add_action('admin_init','remove_meta_boxes');

To only remove one metabox, use this code. For example, this snippet will removes the Excerpt metabox from the post editor.

 function remove_default_excerpt_metabox() {
 remove_meta_box( 'postexcerpt','post','normal' ); 
 }
 add_action('admin_menu','remove_excerpt_metabox');

Note: If this is your first time adding code snippets in WordPress, then please refer to our guide on how to properly copy / paste 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: 7 Best Drag and Drop WordPress Page Builders Compared.