How to Hide Featured Image in WordPress (4 Easy Methods)

16Jun 2022 by Moonthemes 131 Comments

Whether you’d like to achieve a more minimalist look on your website or you want to only remove photos from certain areas of your site, learning how to hide a featured image in WordPress is a useful skill to have in your toolbox.

That way, you have the utmost flexibility when deciding which featured images to hide and which ones to show. 🥷

How to hide featured image in WordPress

The problem is that WordPress automatically activates featured images, so you’re often stuck with an all-or-nothing situation, where you can’t easily hide a featured image on one post, while leaving the rest.

🍀 Luckily, we have several methods for hiding a featured image in WordPress, and they’re accomplished by:

  1. Simply not uploading featured images for certain posts
  2. Hiding featured images using your theme’s settings (if available)
  3. Hiding featured images with code
  4. Conditionally hiding featured images using a plugin

Keep reading to learn about them all.

This one’s simple.

One way to “hide” featured images—on either the blog list or individual posts—is by not uploading featured images to begin with.

You can also delete featured images if you previously uploaded them.

👉 As an example, we’ve left the following Featured Image section empty within a post.

set featured image in WordPress

That’s possible by either not uploading an image in the first place or by clicking the Remove Featured Image button for a post with one uploaded.

remove featured image

After saving or updating the post, there’s no featured image that appears on the lone post.

remove the featured image by not uploading one

That post also lacks a featured image on the Blog page (where all posts are listed), whereas other posts with featured images still show them.

hide featured image WordPress - only for one post

However, with some themes, the blog listing page can look a bit weird if you don’t upload a featured image, so it’s important to test how it looks on your theme.

Featured images appear in two locations:

  • Posts/Pages: somewhere (usually at the beginning of every individual post you create), assuming you’ve uploaded featured images
  • The Blog page: the list of posts you have published on your website

So, you may want to hide them from both spots, or just one of them.

Regardless, it’s wise to check your theme settings before messing with more complicated measures like coding, since many themes already have options to hide featured images in WordPress.

👉 For example, the Neve theme gives you options for hiding the featured image sitewide or only on specific posts. You can also choose between hiding featured images from the blog listing page, the single post page, or both.

Let’s go through the different options…

Hide featured images from blog listing pages

With Neve installed, go to Appearance > Customize in WordPress, then click on Layout > Blog/Archive.

Find the Post Content Order section, then click the Eye icon where it says Thumbnail.

thumbnail icon

That deactivates the display of the “Thumbnail,” which is another word for featured image, when talking about the images on your Blog page.

With that, every single post with a featured image hides the photo on the Blog page. As a result, the Blog page comprises only post titles, descriptions, and whatever metadata you include.

no more featured images on the Blog page

Hide featured images from all single post pages

The Neve theme also offers the option to hide all featured images on the actual posts.

If you use the method in this section, it will hide the featured image for every single post. However, in the next section, you’ll learn how to just hide the featured image for individual posts.

To begin, navigate to Appearance > Customize in WordPress, then click on Layout > Single Post.

If you have a Normal header layout, scroll down to the Elements Order section of the Customizer.

normal header layout

Unmark the Eye icon next to the Thumbnail element.

eye icon

That hides the “Thumbnail,” (another name for a featured image) from view on the post.

removing the thumbnail to hide featured image WordPress

If you’re using a Cover header layout, the process is slightly different.

cover image option

Scroll down in the Layout section of the Customizer to find a setting to Hide Featured Image. Flip that switch, and hit the Publish button.

hide featured image WordPress button

With the setting activated, you’ll see that the featured image gets hidden from the post.

hide featured image WordPress

Not only that, but every single post, across your entire website, hides their featured images as well.

featured image is gone

💡 Keep in mind, however, that hiding the featured image for posts in the theme settings still leaves them visible on the Blog page. So, it’s a wonderful option if you want less clutter on the posts but still like thumbnail featured images on the Blog page.

featured images still show in the Blog page

Of course, you can also remove the thumbnail featured images, as discussed before.

Hide featured images for individual blog posts

Finally, Neve (and many other popular themes) also gives you options to hide the featured image from an individual post’s page, while leaving them activated by default.

To access this setting, open the editor of the post where you want to hide the featured image. Then, click on the Neve icon in the top-right corner to open the Neve Options. You can then turn off the featured image in the Elements section.

How to hide the featured image for a single post

Hiding featured images with CSS code is the most technical method, but it gives you the power to target the specific posts where you want to hide the featured image.

However, you might need to know some basic CSS to adapt these snippets to your theme.

To hide the featured image for a certain post using CSS, go to Appearance > Customize, then navigate to Additional CSS.

Paste this bit of code into the Additional CSS field: 

.post-123 .wp-post-image 
display: none;

Click Publish.

Then, simply replace the 123 with the ID number associated with the desired post.

Find that number by opening the post editor. There, you can look to the WordPress editor URL in the browser, which says a number after post=.

get post id

After getting the code, and the right post number, into the Additional CSS field, be sure to click the Publish button. WordPress then hides the featured image for that post and no others.

hide featured image WordPress with code for individual post

💡 Keep in mind that the Blog page on your website still shows its featured image thumbnails with this method.

images still appear in the Blog page

In addition, you should be able to visit other posts, besides the one in which you hid the featured image, to see their featured images.

show featured image on other posts

Method 4: Use a plugin that hides featured images conditionally

As a final measure, you might think about conditionally hiding or displaying featured images with a plugin.

In layman’s terms, that’s a fancy way of saying you can hide a featured image on specific pages, and it’s all handled by a plugin.

For this, you’ll use the plugin called “Conditionally display featured image on singular posts and pages.”

Install and activate the plugin, then go to Posts in WordPress. Select a post for which you’d like to hide the featured image.

choose a post

Under the Post tab (to the right) find the Featured Image section.

With the plugin now installed, you’ll see an option to “Display featured image in post lists only, hide on singular views.”

Mark that checkbox to activate the feature.

display featured image in post lists only

Be sure to click the Update or Publish button to make the changes live.

click Update

You’ll notice the plugin still leaves thumbnail featured images in your Blog page list.

they still show on the blog page

Yet, the true purpose of the plugin is to hide the featured image—without forcing you to delete the image—on only one post or page.

And for that, it works perfectly.

hidden featured image in WordPress

ℹ️ Note: Some themes take over the featured image functionality with “cover” images, so this plugin may not work if you’ve activated covers. For instance, in the Neve theme, the plugin only functions properly if you have the Normal header layout set, but it does nothing with the Cover header layout.

normal featured image

Summary

It’s not immediately clear in WordPress how to remove or hide a featured image, but there are some tools to make it work—and for different situations like removing a featured image from one post or all posts.

In this article, we covered the handiest options to hide featured images, including:

  • Not uploading a featured image for some of your posts
  • Hiding featured images with your theme settings
  • Hiding featured images with CSS code
  • Conditionally hiding featured images in WordPress by way of plugin

If you’re overwhelmed 😟 by creating featured images for each post, we also have a post that shows you how to easily create featured images using Canva ⬅️.

Do you still have any questions about how to hide the featured image in WordPress? Ask us in the comments!

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