How to disable the WordPress admin bar

Recently, I’ve received a number of comments and questions regarding the WP admin bar, so I thought it would be best to create a post that will give you some guidance as to how to turn this off for your subscribers. 

I know that some users of the WP-Members plugin have asked about adding an option to the plugin to turn it off. For the time being, that is not going to make it onto the project list. The reason for this is that adding additional options/settings requires a significant amount of overhead in terms of programming and also in considering the upgrade process. And for something as simple as the admin bar, which can be managed with 3 lines of code to your functions.php file (or 1 if you really want to be efficient), it’s just not worth it.

So how simple is it?

There is one filter that will turn off the entire admin bar:

add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', '__return_false' );

Adding that single line to your functions.php file (found in your theme folder) will turn off the admin bar for everyone (including you).

Suppose you want to use the admin bar for you (and other admins)?

If you would like to keep the admin bar for yourself, you just need to add a condition to test to see if the current user is an admin.  This example tests if the user has the capability to ‘manage_options’.  (If you have a role manager installed and have made changes to the default WP roles, adjust this accordingly.)

if ( ! current_user_can('manage_options') ) {
	add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', '__return_false' );
}

This can be used regardless of whether you are using the WP-Members plugin or not, but if you are using the plugin, this will prevent your subscribers for having the admin bar appear for them when they are logged in.