Im creating my own theme. When I have a clean wordpress installation, there are some default widgets in the sidebar (search, category, recent posts etc). I know that I can remove them from the sidebar by adding a widget to that sidebar, but I want them removed in the sidebar by default. Is there a way to do that without disabling the widget (unregister_widget())?

  • the 'default widgets' are generally no widgets but some hardcoded functionality in the sidebar file of the theme. when you create your own theme, do not add the corresponding code into the sidebar file. – Michael Feb 11 '14 at 9:47
  • Just open sidebar.php and delete everything except the call to the specific sidebar – Pieter Goosen Feb 11 '14 at 10:25
  • Thanks for the reply. I dont have a hardcoded function, i only use <?php dynamic_sidebar( 'sidebar-main' ); ?>. Could it be that when I activate a clean wordpress installation, and it uses twentyfourteen by default, it copies that theme's default widgets into my theme when I change to my theme under Apparence/Theme? – Keat Feb 11 '14 at 10:28

This function will disable all widgets:

add_filter( 'sidebars_widgets', 'wpse134172_disable_all_widgets' );

function wpse134172_disable_all_widgets( $sidebars_widgets ) {
   if (true == true) {
     $sidebars_widgets = array( false );
   return $sidebars_widgets;

Now the true=true conditional will disable them all the time, while you only want this to happen with a clean install. So you will have to add a different conditional. Which one depends on your actual purpose.

You could use is_active_widget to test whether only the standard widgets are active.

Another option would be to use the after_switch_theme hook to make the deactivation only happen when your theme is activated.

You could even detect whether the user has visited the widgets page in the backend and decide that after this he apparently is cool with the widgets as they are. This would involve setting an option in the database.


It works for me. Deregister all widgets from sidebar. You have to call it once, for example in after_switch_theme action

add_action('after_switch_theme', 'deregister_sidebar_widgets');
function deregister_sidebar_widgets () {   
    $sidebar_widgets = wp_get_sidebars_widgets();

    foreach($sidebar_widgets['sidebar'] as $i => $widget) {

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