Disable Other Plugin Notices self-updates

Groups admin notices from other plugins and themes into one collapsed panel — WordPress core notices stay exactly where they are.

Every plugin thinks its notice is the important one. Open wp-admin on a busy site and the actual page starts three screens down, under review requests, upgrade offers, setup wizards, and license reminders.

Disable Other Plugin Notices takes the notices that come from plugins and themes and puts them in one collapsed panel labeled "Other plugin notices." Nothing is deleted and nothing is silenced — every notice is still there, still complete, still dismissible, one click away. Everything else on the screen moves back up where it belongs.

Notices from WordPress itself are never touched. Core update reminders, PHP version warnings, Site Health results, and settings-saved messages keep their normal position at the top of the screen. That distinction is the whole point of the plugin: the notices that matter for running the site stay in front of you, and the marketing sits in a drawer.

Demo (Click to View on YouTube)

30 seconds: three other-plugin notices go from cluttering the top of the screen to one collapsed panel, leaving WordPress's own notices in place. Click to watch.

📖 Full documentation →

How it decides what is a core notice

Most notice-hiding plugins work by matching CSS classes or scraping text, which a plugin can dodge by changing its markup and a core notice can get caught by accident.

This plugin hooks in after every plugin has registered its notices and, for each one, asks PHP which file the registered callback was actually declared in, using Reflection. A callback declared inside wp-admin/ or wp-includes/ is WordPress itself and is left alone. A callback declared anywhere else — a plugin folder, a theme, an mu-plugin, a drop-in — is moved into the panel.

This is attribution by origin rather than guesswork about wording or CSS classes, so a plugin cannot avoid the panel by styling its notice to look like a core message, and a core notice cannot be swept up by accident. When the origin of a callback cannot be determined, the notice is left exactly where it is.

The panel's markup is also marked so WordPress core's own common.js notice-relocation script (the one that moves .notice/.updated/.error elements to just below the page title) leaves grouped notices where the panel put them, instead of pulling them back out.

Installation

The plugin isn't on the WordPress.org repository. Instead:

1. Download the latest release zip, or clone this repository.
2. Upload the disable-other-plugin-notices folder to /wp-content/plugins/.
3. Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen.
4. That's it — grouping is active immediately, with no configuration.

To turn grouping off for your own account, open the Screen Options tab at the top right of any admin screen that has grouped notices, clear the checkbox, and click Apply. The setting is per user, so one administrator switching it off doesn't change what anyone else sees.

Updates

Since the plugin isn't on WordPress.org, it checks this repository's releases directly. When a new version is published here, the Plugins screen shows the normal "update available" notice and offers a one-click update, exactly like a WordPress.org plugin — no manual re-upload needed after the first install.

What it does not do

It does not delete notices, dismiss them on your behalf, write to other plugins' options, collect analytics, add a menu item, add a settings page, add an upsell, or display a notice of its own. It runs only in wp-admin and does nothing on the front end. The only outbound request it makes is the periodic update check against this repository, covered in Updates above; nothing about your site's content, users, or configuration is included in it.

Filters

Example — keep one important plugin's notices out of the panel:

add_filter( 'dopn_collapse_notice', function ( $collapse, $source ) {
    if ( false !== strpos( $source, '/plugins/my-important-plugin/' ) ) {
        return false;
    }
    return $collapse;
}, 10, 2 );

FAQ

Does this hide WordPress security or update notices? No. Notices printed by WordPress core are never moved.

Are there notices it cannot catch? Yes. The plugin works with notices registered on the standard WordPress notice hooks (admin_notices, all_admin_notices, network_admin_notices, user_admin_notices), which is how the overwhelming majority are printed. A plugin that echoes its notice directly into the page from some other hook, or injects one with JavaScript after the page loads, is printing outside the system and will keep appearing in its usual place.

Does it work on multisite? Yes. Network admin and user admin screens are handled alongside regular admin screens, and the per-user setting follows the user across the network.

What data does the plugin store? One user meta value per user who changes the setting. Nothing else is written to the database. Uninstalling the plugin deletes that value for every user.

Contributors

Jim Walker — The Hack Repair Guy — author and maintainer.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome.

License

GPLv2 or later. See LICENSE.