How to Disable the Gutenberg Block Editor

The Gutenberg editor provokes a lot of debate in the WordPress world. Some people love Gutenberg – we're in that camp and built the PublishPress Blocks plugin. Some people really don't like Gutenberg and prefer to stick with the editor they've used for years.

However, most WordPress users have more mixed feelings and prefer to switch back-and-forth depending on the project. We've had several questions from PublishPress customers who want to know how to disable Gutenberg in some situations, or for some users.

In this guide, we share several different ways you can disable Gutenberg. Each option has its own methods for switching between Gutenberg and the older, classic editor.


Option #1. Disable Gutenberg everywhere

No Gutenberg is a very simple plugin which disables Gutenberg and has no settings at all. Install the plugin and the setup is complete.

No Gutenberg
No Gutenberg

Option #2. Disable Gutenberg when users want

The Classic Editor plugin is the official plugin from the WordPress team. This is the most popular plugin on this list with over 5 million installs, and it will be fully supported and maintained until at least 2022 and probably longer. The main advantage of this plugin is you can allow users to choose when to disable Gutenberg.

Classic Editor plugin for WordPress
Classic Editor
  • Install the Classic Editor plugin.
  • Go to “Settings” then “Writing” in your WordPress admin area.
  • You can choose the default editor and also allow users to switch editors:
Allow Users To Switch 1
Allow Users To Switch 1
  • If you set “Allow users to switch editors” to “Yes”, this next screenshot illustrates what they will see on the “Posts” screen. They'll be able to move between the Block Editor and the Classic Editor with one click.
Switch Editors
Switch Editors

One thing to note is that each post opens in the last editor used regardless of who edited it last. You can see this label in the screenshot above (- Classic editor). This is important for maintaining a consistent experience when editing content.


Option #3. Disable Gutenberg for some roles and post types

The PublishpPress Capabilities plugin is a good choice for selectivity disabling Gutenberg for some users roles.

Pp Capabilities Install
Pp Capabilities Install
  • Install the PublishPress Capabilities plugin.
  • Go to “Capabilities” then “Roles” in your WordPress admin menu.
  • Click “Edit” for the role you want to modify.
  • Check the “Control Allowed Editor” box.
  • You can now choose which editors are available for this role:
Control Allowed Editors
Control Allowed Editors

Option #4. Disable some Gutenberg blocks

If you don't want to disable Gutenberg entirely, there are ways in which you can disable only some features of the block editor.

For example, with the PublishPress Blocks plugin, you can hide blocks so they can't be added by users in some roles.

Publishpress Blocks Add
Publishpress Blocks Add
  • Install the PublishPress Blocks plugin.
  • Go to the “Blocks” link in your WordPress admin menu.
  • This “Block Access” feature will allow you to hide blocks for any role. You can choose the user role from the dropdown menu in the top-left corner.
Disable Blocks
Disable Blocks
Blocks Access Remove
Blocks Access Remove

Option #5. Disable some Gutenberg features

The previous option in this list focused on disabling blocks. With the PublishPress Capabilities plugin you can disable other features inside the Gutenberg editor.

Pp Capabilities Install
Pp Capabilities Install
  • Install the PublishPress Capabilities plugin.
  • Go to “Capabilities” then “Editor Features” in your WordPress admin area.
  • In the top-left corner, choose a user role.
  • You can now remove features from Gutenberg for these users. In the screenshot below, I'm removing all of the items in the top menu bar of the editor.
Editor Features
Editor Features

This next image shows how far you can take this approach. You can disable every feature of Gutenberg except for the block editor itself. In this example, the user can do nothing except write the post and click “Update”. The Free version of PublishPress Capabilities allows you to hide any default features in Gutenberg. The Pro version allows you to hide metaboxes from 3rd party plugins.

Post Editor Clean
Post Editor Clean

More about Controlling Access to Gutenberg

The PublishPress plugins offer a wide variety of ways to control the Gutenberg editor. You can hide metaboxes from 3rd party plugins or remove specific links from the block toolbar menu. You can also hide specific blocks for certain user roles.

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