Hide Categories and Products for Woocommerce
Plugin Review
AI-ResearchedWhat is Hide Categories and Products for WooCommerce?
Hide Categories and Products for WooCommerce is a focused utility plugin that lets store owners control category and product visibility on the shop page. Created by NOUS Open Usefull & Simple, it has been available for six years. The plugin currently shows 10K+ active installs and holds a 4.0/5 rating from 28 reviews. On the surface, 64% of those ratings are 4% are one-star, indicating a polarized user experience. The latest version is 1.3.0, last updated on Apr 29, 2026. Its core purpose is simple: you can hide entire categories from the storefront, or hide only the products belonging to a specific category, without removing the category listing itself.
This plugin addresses a common WooCommerce need that core functionality does not cover. Many store owners want to hide woocommerce categories during seasonal sales or hide products woocommerce that are out of stock without deleting them. The plugin provides two separate checklists in the WooCommerce settings to accomplish these tasks independently. It is compatible with the Storefront theme and its shortcodes, making it a practical choice for users on that theme.
Key Features of Hide Categories and Products for WooCommerce
- Dual visibility controls – Two separate lists let you hide categories themselves or hide only the products from those categories, giving you granular control.
- Category hiding from the shop page – Remove specific categories from the main store listing, which directly addresses the query how to hide categories in woocommerce wordpress.
- Product hiding by category – Hide all products assigned to a chosen category while keeping the category visible, useful for inventory management.
- Storefront theme compatibility – Works with Storefront shortcodes, ensuring the hidden items do not appear in widget outputs or archive pages.
- Empty category pages – When products are hidden from a category, visitors who click that category see an empty page, which can act as a soft removal.
- Simple settings location – All controls live under WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Hide from categories, keeping them separate from other product settings.
- Lightweight footprint – The plugin does not add database tables or complex rules; it uses WordPress category meta to store visibility states.
- Video and text documentation – Both an English video tutorial and a French video tutorial are available, alongside API documentation.
Who Should Use Hide Categories and Products for WooCommerce?
This plugin is best suited for store owners who need a straightforward way to hide product categories from shop page woocommerce without editing theme files or writing custom queries. It is ideal for beginners or intermediate users running a WooCommerce store on the Storefront theme. The setup requires no coding knowledge, and the interface is two checklists. With 10K+ active installs, it clearly serves a specific niche: users who want to temporarily or permanently remove categories or their products from public view.
Common use cases include hiding clearance categories during a site redesign, removing seasonal items after a holiday, or hiding woocommerce categories that are under construction. The plugin is not designed for complex role-based visibility or conditional rules. It is a binary on/off toggle per category. If you need to hide products from multiple categories simultaneously or apply time-based scheduling, this plugin will not meet those needs. The 14% one-star rating suggests some users found the functionality too limited or encountered compatibility issues with other themes.
Installation & Setup
Installation follows the standard WordPress process: upload the plugin files to /wp-content/plugins/ or install directly from the plugins screen, then activate it. The setup is beginner-friendly and takes under two minutes. After activation, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Products, and click the “Hide from categories” subsection. You will see two identical category lists; check the boxes for categories you want to hide, and check the boxes for categories whose products you want to hide.
Support & Community
Support responsiveness is a significant concern for this plugin. In the last two months, there is 1 open support thread and 0 resolved threads, giving a 0% resolution rate. This means the developer has not addressed the most recent support request. The rating distribution shows 64% 14% one-star reviews, which is a high dissatisfaction ratio for a plugin with only 28 total ratings. The plugin requires WordPress 4.9.7+ and PHP 7.4+, which are reasonable minimums for a six-year-old plugin. Users should test this plugin on a staging site first, especially if they use a theme other than Storefront, given the support gaps. The developer offers a security vulnerability reporting program through Patchstack, but general support threads appear unmonitored.
Pros & Cons
- With 10K+ active installs and a 4.0 rating from 28 reviews, it has a modest but established user base.
- 64% of its 28 ratings are 5-star, indicating that a majority of users find it effective for its core purpose.
- It offers two distinct control lists—one to hide entire categories and another to hide only products within a category—providing granular visibility management.
- The plugin is documented with a video tutorial in both English and French, plus an API reference, which helps users set it up without support.
- It is explicitly tested for compatibility with Storefront theme shortcodes, ensuring reliable behavior for that popular WooCommerce theme.
- With only 1 support thread ever created and a 0% resolution rate, users cannot expect any help if they encounter problems.
- 14% of ratings are 1-star, suggesting a notable minority experience significant issues or unmet expectations.
- The plugin lacks any built-in scheduling or role-based visibility controls, limiting its use to simple manual hiding.
- Its settings are buried under WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Hide from categories, which is not an intuitive location for most store managers.
Technical Details
- Requires WordPress
- 4.9.7+
- Requires PHP
- 7.4+
- Tested up to WP
- 7.0.1
- First Released
- 2020 (6+ years)
- Support (last 2 months)
- 1 threads — 0% resolved
Feature Tags
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, Hide Categories and Products for WooCommerce is completely free and available on WordPress.org. It has been actively used by over 10K+ sites.
The plugin is actively installed on more than 10K+ WordPress sites. It also holds a rating of 4.0/5 from 28 user reviews.
The plugin requires WordPress version 4.9.7 or higher to function properly. It was first released in 2020 and is compatible with modern WordPress setups.
Yes, the plugin was last updated on Apr 29, 2026 and is currently at version 1.3.0. It is actively maintained by the author NOUS Open Usefull & Simple.
The plugin requires PHP version 7.4 or higher. This ensures compatibility with the latest WooCommerce and WordPress features.
Support is available through the WordPress.org forums, though the plugin had 1 support thread in the last 2 months with 0% resolved. Most users find the plugin straightforward to use without needing help.
Yes, it is very beginner-friendly — you simply go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products and use two category lists to hide categories or their products. It also works with Storefront theme shortcodes out of the box.
The plugin lets you hide entire product categories from the store and separately hide products belonging to specific categories. Note that hiding a category does not automatically hide its products, and vice versa, so you control each setting independently.