Block Control
Active Installs
80+
Last Updated
September 5, 2026
First Released
August 27, 2019
Download History (Last one month)
Have you ever used WordPress’ new block editor Gutenberg and wished for a way to influence, when and to whom blocks are shown? We’ve been in this situation, that’s why we came up with Block Control. This nifty little plugin allows you to control, whether a block should be displayed under certain circumstances or not. And that’s of course true for both WordPress’ default blocks and blocks added by third-party plugins.
You can hide blocks based on:
- Device types (desktop, mobile, screen reader)
- Viewports/CSS breakpoints
- Login status
- Date (start and end date)
- User roles
- Page types
- Posts of the current post type
- Feeds
- Page number in numbered pages (in archives and search results)
Additionally, you can set an inline formatting to display certain text only for screen readers.
Contribution
Feel free to contribute. The code is available at GitHub.
Documentation
You can find the documentation for Block Control at docs.epiph.yt.
- Upload the plugin files to the
/wp-content/plugins/block-controldirectory, or install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen directly. - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ screen in WordPress
- Now you can use the “Visibility” panel, Block Control adds to every block withing the Gutenberg editor.
After you install and activate Block Control, you will find a new panel “Visibility” added to every blocks right hand side sidebar. Open the panel to choose a condition for the display of a given block.
Conditional blocks configured this way will only be displayed under certain circumstances chosen by you. Please note, these conditions will only take effect in the front end of your site, not inside the editor itself.
Mostly not. Since Block Control removes content completely from the source code and not just hides it via CSS, it may generate different HTML for every user, which is incompatible to any caching plugin.
The only exception is hiding a block by viewport. As this happens via CSS in the browser, the HTML stays the same for every user and thus works together with page caching. Keep in mind that the content is still accessible in the source code.
Since version 1.1.0 you can hide blocks based on post type. Since you maybe have post types that don’t make sense in this context, you can use the filter block_control_ignored_post_types to remove them.
E.g. if your post type slug is called my_post_type, you can use it like this:
function my_filter_block_control_post_types( $post_types ) {
unset( $post_types['my_post_type'];
return $post_types;
}
add_filter( 'block_control_ignored_post_types', 'my_filter_block_control_post_types' );
Yes. During development, I test each feature against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). You can find the Accessibility Conformance Report in the documentation.
If you find an issue, please don’t hesitate to contact me via the support forums or via my contact page.
Epiph.yt is your friendly neighborhood WordPress plugin shop from southern Germany.
You can report security bugs through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team help validate, triage and handle any security vulnerabilities. Report a security vulnerability.
Changelog
2.0.1
- Fixed: A missing dependency during release
2.0.0
- Added: Hide blocks at certain viewports/CSS breakpoints, either by the breakpoints of your theme or by your own media queries
- Added: Blocks with visibility settings are now marked in the document overview and the block itself
- Improved: The visibility panel now explains via tooltip that settings apply to a block
- Improved: Unified the look and feel of the settings
- Updated: PHP requirement changed from minimum version 5.6 to 8.0
- Updated: Library to detect mobile devices
1.6.1
- Improved: Group labels of the visibility controls are now announced by screen readers
- Improved: The hide by date controls now have unique, descriptive labels for screen readers
- Improved: The visibility panel now indicates to screen readers that settings apply to a block
- Improved: Blocks hidden by date are now marked with an outline instead of reduced contrast
- Improved: The option to hide content for screen readers now explains when not to use it
- Improved: The documentation link in the plugin list now announces that it opens in a new tab
- Improved: The page numbers field now explains its format and that only numbers are allowed
- Fixed: The visibility panel no longer closes while changing the hide by date settings
- Fixed: Focus is no longer lost after removing a hide or display date
- Fixed: Screen readers are now informed if no visibility setting applies to a block anymore
- Fixed: Posts without a title now have a readable label in the visibility settings
- Fixed: Hiding a block for screen readers no longer produces invalid HTML in nested blocks
- Fixed: The screen reader text class is now added reliably regardless of quotes and other classes
1.6.0
- Added: Allow hiding content in feeds
- Added: Allow filtering the post object before checking for post type
- Added: Link to documentation in plugin row
- Fixed: Potential wrong return type in
Block_Control::toggle_blocks()
1.5.1
- Fixed: A block with a start date to hide in the future and with an end date will now correctly be hidden between those two dates
1.5.0
- Added: Option to hide based on a numbered page (e.g. in archives)
1.4.1
- We added an indeterminate visual display of the “All” checkbox, e.g. while selecting posts.
- We fixed displaying post type visibility settings inside the site editor.
1.4.0
- We added the possibility to hide inline text for everyone but screen readers.
1.3.0
- We added the possibility to patterns to hide them by any post type available.
- We extended the list of ignored post types with font families and font faces.
1.2.0
- We added the option to disable blocks for screen readers. That means that the block is still visible, but will be ignored by screen readers entirely.
1.1.12
- We fixed all variants of hide by date setting to be properly checked.
1.1.11
- We fixed the hide by date setting if only one of the dates is used.
1.1.10
- We fixed the hide by date setting if both settings are in the future or both are in the past.
- We improved the settings for hide by date for better accessibility and functionality.
1.1.9
- We fixed a problem with some blocks no more saving the visibility settings.
1.1.8
- We fixed a problem with broken blocks after updating to version 1.1.7. The editor now doesn’t contain any classes from Block Control anymore.
1.1.7
- We fixed compatibility with dynamic blocks.
1.1.6
- We improved the ability to use the filter
blockControl.unsupportedBlockswithout needing to load the own JavaScript early.
1.1.5
- We added a filter
blockControl.unsupportedBlocksto filter the list of unsupported blocks. - We disabled Block Control for the SimpleTOC block in order to display it properly in the backend.
1.1.4
- We disabled Block Control for the Polylang language switcher in order to display it properly in the backend.
1.1.3
- We added full support for WordPress 6.1 (replaced a deprecated function).
1.1.2
- We fixed a potential error in blocks in the widget area.
1.1.1
- We fixed a dependency problem, which may result in preventing the settings panel to appear.
1.1.0
- Since the originally planned Pro version will never be completed, we decided to merge its code into the free version of Block Control.
- Hide blocks based on roles
- Hide blocks based on dates
- Hide blocks based on page types (
is_home,is_page, etc.) - Hide blocks based on posts of the current post type (useful especially for reusable blocks)
1.0.4
- We fixed a problem with assets loading in the backend
1.0.3
- We fixed a problem while checking for block attributes
1.0.2
- We fixed a problem that may load multiple editor scripts in the frontend even if they are not needed there
- We fixed a problem where Block Control options won’t be available for certain blocks
1.0.1
- We fixed the internationalization for all strings
1.0.0
- Initial release
Available Versions
| Version | Download | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 2.0.1 | Download | Stable |
| 2.0.0 | Download | Stable |
| 1.6.1 | Download | Stable |
| 1.6.0 | Download | Stable |
| 1.5.1 | Download | Stable |
| 1.5.0 | Download | Stable |
| 1.4.1 | Download | Stable |
| 1.4.0 | Download | Stable |
| 1.3.0 | Download | Stable |
| 1.2.0 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.12 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.11 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.10 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.9 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.8 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.7 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.6 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.5 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.4 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.3 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.2 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.1 | Download | Stable |
| 1.1.0 | Download | Stable |
| 1.0.3 | Download | Stable |
| 1.0.2 | Download | Stable |
| 1.0.1 | Download | Stable |
| 1.0.0 | Download | Stable |
| Development | Download | Trunk |
