Remove WordPress emoji code without a plugin

This is a function that goes into your functions.php fie within your theme which will disable all the code related to the new Emojis that are included by default in WordPress

Why would you want to do this? Well if it’s a personal blog, then I can imagine that you might want the ability to add these smiley characters to your creative writing. 100% of my WordPress work is related to building websites for businesses and I can only think of one client that might want to include an Emoji in their blog posts.

The other factor to consider is that they are included by default in new WordPress installs. I am one for reducing the amount of bloat in WordPress to a minimum and I like to keep my sites lean and clean.

So to remove WP Emojis from your install, simple copy and paste the code below into your theme’s functions.php file

/*
*
* Disable Emojicons
*
*/

function disable_wp_emojicons() {

// all actions related to emojis
remove_action( 'admin_print_styles', 'print_emoji_styles' );
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'print_emoji_detection_script', 7 );
remove_action( 'admin_print_scripts', 'print_emoji_detection_script' );
remove_action( 'wp_print_styles', 'print_emoji_styles' );
remove_filter( 'wp_mail', 'wp_staticize_emoji_for_email' );
remove_filter( 'the_content_feed', 'wp_staticize_emoji' );
remove_filter( 'comment_text_rss', 'wp_staticize_emoji' );

// filter to remove TinyMCE emojis
add_filter( 'tiny_mce_plugins', 'disable_emojicons_tinymce' );
}
add_action( 'init', 'disable_wp_emojicons' );

function disable_emojicons_tinymce( $plugins ) {
if ( is_array( $plugins ) ) {
return array_diff( $plugins, array( 'wpemoji' ) );
} else {
return array();
}
}