How to Hide Unwanted Gutenberg Blocks in WordPress

The block editor is now the default way to add content to your WordPress site. Every time you add features such as images, videos, tables, or lists, you will add a new block.

By default, WordPress arrives with dozens of block options and every time you install a plugin, there’s a chance that the plugin will add many more. There are some excellent plugins such as PublishPress Blocks that can super-charge your site with even more powerful blocks.

If your site ends up with hundreds of blocks, your writing interface will become busy. Here’s a preview of all the block areas, even in a default WordPress site:

Hide Gutenberg Blocks for Yourself

If you want to remove individual blocks for yourself, this is possible with core WordPress.

• Click the 3 dots in the top-right corner.
• Click “Preferences” and then “Blocks”.
• Now you’ll be able to disable any blocks you don’t want to use. Just uncheck the boxes next to the blocks you want to hide.

Hide Gutenberg Blocks For Other users

It is also possible to completely hide blocks from some users and user roles.

Using the PublishPress Blocks plugin, you can create editor profiles for different users and user roles.

These profiles allow you to control which users can add which Gutenberg blocks. For example, if you want to prevent some users from adding “Table” blocks, you can block them from doing that with this profiles feature.

To get started, install the PublishPress Blocks plugin.

• Go to “PublishPress Blocks” in your WordPress admin menu.
• Click “Profiles”.
• Click the “Default” profile. This is the current profile for you and all the other uses on your site.
• If you disable a block here, it will be disable for all your others. In the image below, we are disabling the “Column” layout for everyone on the site.

You can take this further by creating extra editor profiles. This guide shows how to add editor profiles.