Restore WordPress Classic Widget Editor

If you’re a classic WordPress user and the new WordPress widget editor has frustrated you a lot, then this article is for you. In this article, I will show you how you can easily restore WordPress classic widget editor with a piece of code/snippet or with a Free Plugin. My recommendation is to use snippet or code instead of plugin, as extra plugins will slow down your WordPress website.

If you are not comfortable with editing your theme files, then you can also restore WordPress widget editor to classic editor with the use of a free plugin which also I am going to share in this article.

We all know that WordPress widget editor gets updated with time, but sometimes we just want to use the classic editor and do not want to change it. So to do that just follow the steps mentioned in this article.

Table of Content:

A). Restore WordPress classic widget editor (without Plugin)
B). Restore WordPress classic widget editor (with Plugin)

Also check:
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A). Restore WordPress classic widget editor (without Plugin)

My Recommendations before restoring WordPress classic widget editor programmatically using functions.php.

Take a full backup of your website before making any changes to function.php.

Be careful while editing the functions.php file. You can also use any code snippet plugin to run this customization on your site without editing the functions.php file directly. We recommend this Free Code Snippet Plugin.

It is recommended to create a child theme and do this customization with your child theme. You can Create a child theme with this free plugin (after creating the child theme you can delete the plugin) . If you do not use child theme, It may be deleted or overwritten once the theme developer updates the main theme.

Steps to Restore WordPress new widget editor back to classic editor without plugin

1). Login to your WordPress admin area. Then Got to Appearence>Theme File Editor.

2). Select the current theme if it is already not selected.

3). Select the functions.php file.

4). Add the below code to functions.php

/**
* restore wordpress classic widget editor
*/
// Disables the block editor from managing widgets in the Gutenberg plugin wpamit
add_filter( 'gutenberg_use_widgets_block_editor', '__return_false' );
// Disables the block editor from managing widgets wpamit
add_filter( 'use_widgets_block_editor', '__return_false' );

5). After adding the snipped code, click ‘update file’. It should look like the below image:

You will now see the WordPress new widget editor has been replaced with classic editor without using any plugin.

B). Restore WordPress classic widget editor (with Plugin)

You can easily achieve this customization with the help of this free plugin. Follow the steps below.

1). Login to your WordPress admin dashboard, then hover over to ‘Plugins’ and click on ‘Add New’. Just like below image.

2). Search for plugin ‘Classic Widgets‘. In search results, look for the plugin By WordPress Contributors. Then Click on ‘Install Now’ button and then click on ‘Activate’ button.

That’s it. This plugin doesn’t have any settings. So, you do not need to make any customization after installing this plugin. This plugin will automatically change new widget editor to classic widget editor.

Hope this tutorial will help you to achieve what you want. If you have any queries or feedback, please do not hesitate to comment below.