Disable default Wordpress widgets in sidebar

Question

Im creating my own theme. When I have a clean wordpress installation, there are some default widgets in the sidebar (search, category, recent posts etc). I know that I can remove them from the sidebar by adding a widget to that sidebar, but I want them removed in the sidebar by default. Is there a way to do that without disabling the widget (unregister_widget())?

Answer 1

This function will disable all widgets:

add_filter( 'sidebars_widgets', 'wpse134172_disable_all_widgets' );

function wpse134172_disable_all_widgets( $sidebars_widgets ) {
   if (true == true) {
     $sidebars_widgets = array( false );
     }
   return $sidebars_widgets;
   }

Now the true=true conditional will disable them all the time, while you only want this to happen with a clean install. So you will have to add a different conditional. Which one depends on your actual purpose.

You could use is_active_widget to test whether only the standard widgets are active.

Another option would be to use the after_switch_theme hook to make the deactivation only happen when your theme is activated.

You could even detect whether the user has visited the widgets page in the backend and decide that after this he apparently is cool with the widgets as they are. This would involve setting an option in the database.

Answer 2

It works for me. Deregister all widgets from sidebar. You have to call it once, for example in after_switch_theme action

EDIT:

https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_get_sidebars_widgets/

"This function’s access is marked private. This means it is not intended for use by plugin or theme developers, only in other core functions"

add_action('after_switch_theme', 'deregister_sidebar_widgets');
function deregister_sidebar_widgets () {   
    $sidebar_widgets = wp_get_sidebars_widgets();

    foreach($sidebar_widgets['sidebar'] as $i => $widget) {
        unset($sidebars_widgets['sidebar'][$i]);
    }
    wp_set_sidebars_widgets($sidebars_widgets);
}

Answer 3

I have a widget area called "aftercontent" and I wanted to disable the Categories and Annual Archive Widgets when viewing a custom post type called Staff. This is how I did it.

add_filter( 'sidebars_widgets', 'epca_disable_widgets' );
function epca_disable_widgets( $sidebars_widgets ) {
    if ('staff' == get_post_type()) {
        foreach($sidebars_widgets['aftercontent'] as $i => $widget){
            if(substr( $widget, 0, 10 ) === "categories"){
                unset($sidebars_widgets['aftercontent'][$i]);
            }
            if(substr( $widget, 0, 21 ) ===  'annual_archive_widget'){
                unset($sidebars_widgets['aftercontent'][$i]);
            }
        }
    }
    return $sidebars_widgets;
}

I used "substr( $widget, 0, 10 )" because if I want to remove any widget that begins with "categories". Else I could have just said "if($widget == 'categories-3')" or whatever the exact name of the widget is.