How to Disable Emojis in WordPress

Emojis, or the little smiley faces, thumbs up, and other expressive icons, are supported by WordPress by default. Emojis can be helpful and give your content personality, but they also have drawbacks. Emoji scripts and styles can make your pages heavier, which could cause your website to load more slowly. Turning off emojis is a wise choice for people who value performance and speed above all else, or who just don't need them.

If you need to disable emojis in WordPress, add the following code snippet at the bottom of your theme's functions.php file:

// Disable the emoji's
function themesdna_disable_wp_emojis() {
    // Remove the actions related to emojis
    remove_action('wp_head', 'print_emoji_detection_script', 7);
    remove_action('wp_print_styles', 'print_emoji_styles');
    remove_action('admin_print_scripts', 'print_emoji_detection_script');
    remove_action('admin_print_styles', 'print_emoji_styles');
    remove_filter('the_content_feed', 'wp_staticize_emoji');
    remove_filter('comment_text_rss', 'wp_staticize_emoji');
    remove_filter('wp_mail', 'wp_staticize_emoji_for_email');

    // Filter to remove TinyMCE emojis
    add_filter('tiny_mce_plugins', 'themesdna_disable_emojis_in_tinymce');
    add_filter('wp_resource_hints', 'themesdna_disable_emojis_remove_dns_prefetch', 10, 2);
}

// Remove TinyMCE emojis
function themesdna_disable_emojis_in_tinymce($plugins) {
    if (is_array($plugins)) {
        return array_diff($plugins, array('wpemoji'));
    } else {
        return array();
    }
}

// Remove emoji CDN hostname from DNS prefetching hints
function themesdna_disable_emojis_remove_dns_prefetch($urls, $relation_type) {
    if ('dns-prefetch' == $relation_type) {
        $emoji_svg_url = 'https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/11/svg/';
        $urls = array_diff($urls, array($emoji_svg_url));
    }
    return $urls;
}

add_action('init', 'themesdna_disable_wp_emojis');