How to Hide or Highlight the Screen Options Tab in WordPress

The Screen Options tab at the top of pages in the WordPress admin section often goes unnoticed.

Sitting up in the corner of the page as it does, the Screen Options tab often goes unnoticed.

For some admins, that’s a good thing. For whatever reason, they don’t want users that have access to the backend playing around with it, and they hope it continues to go unnoticed.

For other admins, however, the very opposite is true. They actually WANT users to notice it. They feel it will help them do what they need to do more easily.

The Screen Options tab contains some important options.

In this post, we have good news for both types of admins. We have a way to hide the Screen Options tab completely, and we also have a way to highlight it so that it might attract a little more attention.

Hiding the Screen Options Tab

There are two options for hiding the Screen Options tab.

Code Method

The first is more manual and wide-sweeping. If you place the following snippet of code into your functions.php file, the Screen Options tab will disappear across the whole backend for all users except the admin.

(As you’ll be changing your theme with this solution, you should probably consider either creating a child theme or making your own simple plugin to use.

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 function remove_screen_options_tab() {
       return current_user_can( 'manage_options' );
  }
  add_filter('screen_options_show_screen', 'remove_screen_options_tab');

Plugin Method

And the there is the Screen Options and Help Show Customize plugin that will do this trick for you. But it also gives you more control at the same time.

This plugin lets you hide both the Screen Options tab and the Help tab on whichever pages you like, and also for whomever you like.

So, for example, you could hide the Screen Options tab only on the New Post screen for everyone under the level of Admin, but leave it visible on the Media screen – but only for Editors and above.

Your options are totally open for where (New Post, Media, etc.), what (Screen Options or Help tab), and who (Admin, Editor, Author, etc.).