Moving jQuery to the footer without using de-register in WordPress

Question

Hi I was looking for a way to move wordpress default jQuery to the footer and I saw this answer: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/225936/50584

So, I tried this approach in my child theme's functions.php file:

add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', function() {
    // Move jQuery to the footer
    wp_scripts()->add_data( 'jquery', 'group', 1 );
    wp_scripts()->add_data( 'jquery-core', 'group', 1 );
    wp_scripts()->add_data( 'jquery-migrate', 'group', 1 );
});

But it is not pushing jquery to the footer. Any idea guys why is this happening? I want to avoid the de-register & re-register way of doing this.

Any help will be highly appreciated.

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Important Update: Since WP v3.9 there is no way of putting jquery scripts in your footer rather than using the de-register & re-register option. It is just simply cannot be done as the author pointed out below.

Answer 1

You should use the param $scripts of the hook wp_default_scripts. In this hook was en-queued all default scripts, also jQuery and you can change his data, like the group for load in footer.

add_action( 'wp_default_scripts', '_print_jquery_in_footer' );
function _print_jquery_in_footer( $scripts ) {

    if ( ! is_admin() )
        $scripts->add_data( 'jquery', 'group', 1 );
}

Also in the newer code style via anonymous function, like your question example; possible since php 5.3:

add_action(
    'wp_default_scripts',
    function( $scripts ) {
        if ( ! is_admin() )
            $scripts->add_data( 'jquery', 'group', 1 );
    }
);

Edit: This will only work with WordPress versions lower than 3.9!