Disable Emojis (GDPR friendly)

by Ryan Hellyer

Description

This plugin disables the new WordPress emoji functionality. GDPR friendly.

Note: Emoticons will still work and emojis will still work in browsers which have built in support for them. This plugin simply removes the extra code bloat used to add support for emojis in older browsers.

GDPR compliancy

This plugin does not do anything to make your site less GDPR compliant. It disables the DNS prefetching of emojis within WordPress, which should ensure improved privacy. To determine if your site is GDPR compliant, please seek legal advice. I have done my best to ensure the plugin is 100% GDPR compliant, but I am not a lawyer so can not guarantee anything 😉

Installation

After you’ve downloaded and extracted the files:

Upload the complete ‘disable-emojis’ folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory OR install via the plugin installer
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
And yer done!

Visit the Disable Emojis plugin for more information.

Reviews

Small but mighty

By Jason LeMahieu (MadtownLems) (MadtownLems) on September 22, 2025

It's so rare to find a plugin these days that has no bloat, no upsells, no ANYTHING beyond exactly what's needed to get the job done. Thank you!

Clean Up Your Site & Improve GDPR Compliance

By TraceMyIP on June 9, 2025

Disable Emojis by Ryan Hellyer is a gem! With 60k+ active installs and nearly perfect 5-star rating, it's clearly doing something right. This lightweight plugin strips out WordPress's bloated emoji code while keeping your content looking great in modern browsers. The GDPR-friendly bonus is huge - it stops DNS prefetching to external emoji servers, protecting visitor privacy. Ryan's been maintaining this for years and it shows. Your site loads faster, stays compliant, and emojis still work naturally. Win-win-win!

Doesn't activate

By kianmovahhed on November 13, 2024

Does not activate. Every time I click "activate", the page just refreshes with no action.

Does what I need it to

By Chris Lovie-Tyler (chrislt) on April 19, 2024

Thanks for making this plugin, Ryan!

Thorough and concise

By Walf (wallfur) on May 29, 2023

No settings, just works.

Performance increase

By Huckleberry (helijobs) on October 8, 2022

Tested with PageSpeed Insights.

I love it!

By mahyulan on October 3, 2021

Simple, lightweight and just doing the job! Thanks.

Works like a charm

By Robert (metbril) on March 1, 2021

No more loading from external sites. I'd like to self-host everything! Tested with 5.6.2

Works as expected!

By emilioborraz on December 30, 2020

It works perfectly!

does exactly what it is supposed to do without bloat

By ctra on October 21, 2020

Other plugins pretending to remove emojis only do it partially or come with tons of extra (to be paid) functionality, nagging for a pro update all the time. also thanks a lot for the super fast feedback to bump version for current compatibility level!

Changelog

1.7.7

Confirmed support for newer WordPress versions.

1.7.6

Confirmed support for newer WordPress versions.

1.7.5

Added Composer support.

1.7.4

Fixing typos.

1.7.3

Unneeded version bump to shut the WordPress.org notice up.

1.7.2

Subtle improvement to code cleanliness.
Improved documentation regarding GDPR issues.

1.7.1

Added GDPR friendly label on advice from Ipstenu.

1.7

Removed DNS prefetch URL again.
This time using simple string check rather than relying on internal WordPress filters.

1.6

Removed DNS prefetch URL. Props to Aaron Queen for assisting with this.

1.5.3

Catering to new DNS prefetch URL in version 4.7 of core

1.5.2

Improved documentation.
Removed redundant dns prefetching. Thanks to Milan Dinic for the pull request.

1.5.1

Updating documentation.

1.5

Catering for invalid $plugin array.

1.4

Updating to use Otto’s code.

1.3

Removing extraneous styles.

1.2

Bug fix.

1.1

Updating to work with latest beta.

1.0

Initial release.