Hide/Remove Metadata

78 Quality Score

Active Installs

19/30

At 20,000 active installs, it has a respectable following but sits well behind top alternatives like WP Meta and Date Remover at 90,000 installs.

Update Freshness

25/25

A perfect maintenance score, with the plugin last updated on 2026-05-27 and tested against WordPress 7.0, showing the developer is actively keeping pace.

User Rating

11/15

A 72/100 rating from just 14 reviewers means the sample is too small to draw strong conclusions, though the score is above average.

Support Health

8/15

Zero support threads and zero resolutions is concerning since there is no track record to evaluate how the author handles real user issues.

WP Compatibility

15/15

Full marks for compatibility, requiring only WordPress 5.9 and PHP 7.4, which covers the vast majority of self-hosted installs.

Scores higher than 61% of indexed plugins

About

Hide/Remove Metadata is a free WordPress plugin that helps you hide author and published date either by CSS or PHP from your website effortlessly.

Active Installs 20k+

Rating ★★★½ 3.6/5

Last Updated 2026-05-27 9:37am GMT

Requires WordPress 5.9+

Tested Up To 7.0.4

Requires PHP 7.4+

✓ No known vulnerabilities

What It Does

Hide/Remove Metadata lets you strip author bylines and published dates from WordPress posts without editing theme files. It offers both a CSS-based hide and a PHP-based removal, giving you the choice to suppress the markup entirely or just hide it visually.

Who It's For

This plugin is a good fit for site owners running anonymous publications, corporate knowledge bases, or portfolio sites that want a cleaner byline-free appearance across default WordPress themes. It works well for small to mid-sized sites where the standard Twenty-something or block theme still shows author and date metadata.

Who Should Skip It

If you already use a custom theme that does not display author or date metadata, or if you want to hide post metadata only on certain pages or for specific user roles, this plugin's one-size-fits-all approach is too blunt. Developers comfortable adding a few lines of CSS or editing template files should skip it entirely.

The Bottom Line

For a single-purpose metadata stripper, this plugin is capable and well maintained, but its 20,000 installs and 14 ratings are modest. The lack of any support history means you are trusting an unproven author, which is why the overall score lands at 77.56/100. It is a reasonable choice for straightforward sites, though WP Meta and Date Remover offers a more proven track record at similar scope.

Pick this when your privacy concern is bots scraping email addresses and phone numbers rather than bylines and dates.

Disable Everything 83/100

Choose this if you want broader control over many WordPress features, not just author and date metadata.

Dynamic Visibility for Elementor 82/100

Pick this when you build with Elementor and need conditional visibility rules down to the widget level.

WP Meta and Date Remover 82/100

Choose this more popular alternative with 90,000 installs when you want a similar feature with a longer user track record.

WP Hide & Security Enhancer 81/100

Pick this when metadata removal is part of a broader WordPress hardening and URL-hiding strategy.