How to add 'use_desc_for_title = 0' to all wp_list_categories calls?

Question

My category descriptions are extremely long, so I don't want the descriptions to be used in the title attribute of my category lists. However, WP does this automatically when it outputs the default category widget in the markup.

Is it possible to add a filter in functions.php that assigns the default value for 'use_desc_for_title' to 0? (The default is 1)?

Answer 1

I was finally able to figure this out. Much easier than I thought...

function my_categories_filter($cat_args){
    $cat_args['title_li'] = '';
    $cat_args['exclude_tree'] = 1;
    $cat_args['exclude'] = 1;
    $cat_args['use_desc_for_title'] = 0;
    return $cat_args;
}

add_filter('widget_categories_args', 'my_categories_filter', 10, 2);

Answer 2

I came looking for solution to the same problem. Eventually discovered a very easy solution rather than modifying the function as suggested by Scott B.

It can simply be achieved by using &use_desc_for_title=0in the appropriate place where you want to hide the long description of category.

It would look something like

<?php wp_list_categories('orderby=id&show_count=1&use_desc_for_title=0'); ?>