You open your homepage to check a new banner and there is a black strip across the top with your name in the corner. Your first worry is that every customer sees it too. They do not. That strip is the WordPress admin bar, and it only appears for people who are logged in.
Before you hide it, know that it is also the quickest way to jump from a page on your site straight into editing it. Hiding the admin toolbar for your own account takes one checkbox; switching it off for staff or customers takes a little more, and it occasionally appears or vanishes when it should not.
Who sees the WordPress admin bar
WordPress shows the toolbar to logged-in users only. A visitor who has never logged in sees your site without it, and so does Google. If you want to see the site exactly as a customer does, open it in a private or incognito window, or log out.
Inside the dashboard the bar is always present. The setting described later only affects the bar on the public side of the site.
What the toolbar shows, front and back
The items change depending on where you are, your role and your theme. Plugins also add their own. These are the core ones:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| WordPress logo | Links to information about WordPress and its support forums. Rarely needed. |
| Your site name | On the site, a shortcut into the dashboard. In the dashboard, a shortcut back to the site. |
| Customize or Edit Site | On the public site, opens the Customizer for classic themes or the Site Editor for block themes. |
| Updates icon | Shows when plugin, theme or WordPress updates are waiting, with a count. |
| Comments icon | Shows how many comments are waiting for approval. |
| + New | A quick way to start a new post, page, media upload or user. |
| Edit Page / Edit Post | Appears when you view a single page or post on the site, and opens it in the editor. |
| Howdy, your name | Your account menu: Edit Profile and Log Out. |
In recent versions of WordPress the bar inside the dashboard also shows a keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+K or ⌘K on a Mac, that opens a command search for jumping to screens and actions. Plugins commonly add items too: an SEO score, a cache-clearing button, a page builder’s “Edit with” link, a security alert. These are handy, but if your bar is crowded the plugin’s own settings sometimes let you remove its item.
For a tour of the menus on the left of the dashboard, which work alongside the toolbar, see our WordPress dashboard explained post.
How to hide the admin toolbar for yourself
This is a personal setting, so changing it affects only your own account.
- In the dashboard, go to Users → Profile. If your account is not an administrator, the menu item is simply Profile.
- Near the top, in the Personal Options section, find Toolbar.
- Untick Show Toolbar when viewing site.
- Scroll to the bottom and click Update Profile.
Now load the front of the site. The bar is gone, and you are still logged in. To get back to the dashboard, add /wp-admin/ to your site’s address. To bring the bar back, tick the same box again.
The rest of that profile screen holds your name, email and password settings, which other posts cover; this checkbox is the only part that concerns the toolbar.
Hiding it for other users and roles
One or two staff accounts
An administrator can change the same checkbox for anyone. Go to Users → All Users, click Edit under the person’s name, untick Show Toolbar when viewing site and click Update User. For a team of three or four, this is all you need. The person can turn it back on for themselves later, which is usually fine.
A whole role, or customers who register
When many people log in, such as shop customers, members or students, editing each profile is not practical. There are two common approaches:
- Check what you already have. WooCommerce, for example, normally keeps the toolbar away from customer accounts on its own. Membership and LMS plugins often have a setting for it as well.
- Use a small plugin or snippet. Several plugins on wordpress.org hide the admin bar by role; follow our guide to installing a WordPress plugin if you have not done it before. Alternatively, a one-line snippet using WordPress’s show_admin_bar filter can hide it for everyone who is not an administrator. Add snippets through a snippets plugin rather than your theme files; our comparison of a code snippets plugin and functions.php explains why.
Hiding the toolbar is a convenience, not a security measure. Someone without the right role still cannot reach settings they are not allowed to see, with or without the bar. Limiting what each person can do is a matter of roles, covered in our post on giving each WordPress user only the access they need.
When the toolbar behaves oddly
The bar has vanished while you are logged in
First check the Profile checkbox above. If it is ticked and the bar still does not appear on the site, the usual causes are:
- Your theme is missing a standard hook. The bar is added in the page footer through a hook that every theme should call. A badly built custom theme sometimes leaves it out.
- You are seeing a cached page. Some caching setups serve the logged-out version even to you. Clear the cache and reload the page.
- A plugin hides it. Admin-customisation, membership and security plugins can all switch the bar off. Check their settings.
Visitors say they can see it
Ask for a screenshot. Usually the person is logged in, perhaps as a customer account. If a visitor who has never logged in really sees an admin bar, a caching plugin or server cache has stored a logged-in copy of the page. Purge the cache and check the plugin’s option to skip caching for logged-in users.
The bar covers part of your header
WordPress pushes the page down to make room for the bar, but sticky or fixed headers in some themes do not allow for it and end up underneath. Visitors never see this, so it is cosmetic. Hide the bar for yourself, or ask the theme’s support about it.
Settings, plugins, content and users each have their own pages in our guide to managing a WordPress website, if you want to see where the toolbar fits among the other jobs.
Frequently asked questions
Can I remove the toolbar inside the dashboard too?
Not with a normal setting. WordPress always shows it in the admin area because it carries the account menu, notifications and the link back to your site. Plugins and code can remove individual items from it, which is usually a better approach than trying to remove the whole bar from the dashboard.
Does the admin bar slow down my site?
It loads a small amount of extra code, but only for logged-in users, so your visitors and search engines are unaffected. If the site feels slow while you are logged in, the cause is more likely that logged-in users often skip the page cache, which makes every page build fresh for you.
Can I add my own shortcuts to the admin bar?
Yes, although WordPress has no setting for it. Admin-customisation plugins can add links, for example to a booking system or your hosting panel, and a developer can add items with a few lines of code. Keep it short, since a crowded bar on a phone or small laptop quickly becomes hard to use and items start to wrap or disappear.
Why does the toolbar look different on my phone?
On narrow screens WordPress switches to a compact version of the bar, with larger icons and most text labels hidden so they are easier to tap. On the smallest screens it also scrolls away with the page instead of staying pinned to the top. Nothing is broken, and the same menus are there behind the icons.
Unfamiliar items on the toolbar usually come from a plugin someone installed and forgot about. If you would like a second pair of eyes on what is running on your site, and whether all of it is still needed, our WordPress support for small businesses is a practical place to start.
Next in this series: How to Change Your WordPress Password, Step by Step
