Remove WordPress Featured Image Box

Here is a helpful function for WordPress theme designers and developers. You can remove the Featured Image controls when creating a post, in case you have something custom that you want to use.

Simply place this action (the code snippet) in your functions.php file to remove the featured image meta box.

add_action('do_meta_boxes', 'remove_image_box');
 
function remove_image_box() {
	$current_user = wp_get_current_user();
	if ($current_user->user_level < 10){
		remove_meta_box( 'postimagediv','post','side' );
	}
}

This function includes a check for non-admin users. WordPress User Levels range from 0 to 10. Level 0 (zero) is the lowest possible 10 is the highest permission level – an admin user.

You can change the number 10 to any User Level or you can remove that part of the function altogether and just use the line remove_meta_box( 'postimagediv','post','side' ); to remove the box for everyone.

That’s it. Happy theme-ing!