Hide Drafts in Menus
Hide unpublished pages in your custom menus.
Solid choice
Hide Drafts in Menus is a solid plugin choice in 2026, with a few things worth checking first. It runs on 1K+ sites, is rated 5/5 and was last updated 4 months ago, and scores 67/100 on our health check.
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Hide Drafts in Menus stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| drafts | #1 |
| menus | #7 |
| pages | >100 |
| unpublished | #1 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
Rating breakdown
★★★★★★★★★★ 5 from 9 reviews
About Hide Drafts in Menus
From the official readme · v1.6.0.1Description
If you unpublish a page or post, it still appears in your custom menus. This plugin automatically prevents pages/posts set to “draft” or “pending review” from appearing in custom menus on the site, while keeping their place in the menu structure. When they’re published, they’ll appear in the menu automatically.
This plugin also modifies the custom menu editing screen to clearly indicate the unpublished status of items in the menu.
NOTE: We are aware of a limitation in the plugin, that a page/post must be published to appear in the list of items you can select to add to the menu. We are working on a solution. In the meantime, the workaround is to temporarily publish the page/post, add it to the menu, and then set it back to “draft”.
Installation
- Upload the plugin files to the
/wp-content/plugins/directory. - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- There’s no step 3!
Changelog
1.6.0.1 – 2026.05.18
- Refactored
r34hdm_get_unpublished_items()function to retrieve non-published posts usingget_posts()function instead of a direct SQL query. (Note: The previous direct SQL query allowed us to limit the returned list to posts that were already confirmed to be in the menu; however, this method allows for a single query per page rather than one for each menu, which may offset any performance impact.) - Miscellaneous tweaks to pass Plugin Check tests.
- Bumped “tested up to” to 7.0.
- Updated copyright year.
1.5.1 – 2024.05.14
- Fixed an issue that would cause categories to be hidden. Added a check to ensure that the logic for hiding menu items only applies to items that are a post type (e.g. post, page, custom post type), not taxonomies or other types of objects.
- Changed CSS styling for hidden items on the admin Menus page to match the default WordPress styling for deleted items.
- Bumped “tested up to” to 6.5.3.
1.5.0 – 2023.11.01
- Changed SQL query to simply look for all posts that are not set to a status of
publish, rather than the previous check for a few specific status values. - Removed now-redundant post status text on menu editing screen (WordPress now displays the status rather than the post type for non-published menu items) and changed visual appearance to a light red background and partial opacity.
1.4.1 – 2023.07.23
- Fixed bug that prevented draft page CSS from being applied for menus that are not assigned to a theme menu location.
- Updated “tested up to” to 6.3.
1.4.0
- Added global
$r34hdm_resultsvariable to eliminate duplicate queries, resulting in a slight performance increase. - Updated “tested up to” to 5.8.1.
1.3.1
- Fixed bug that would return a PHP warning if the menu is empty. In some cases this may have been breaking the page preview in the Customizer.
- Updated “tested up to” to 5.3.
For developers
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Best Hide Drafts in Menus alternatives
All drafts plugins →
FAQ
Hide Drafts in Menus: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 30, 2026
Is Hide Drafts in Menus free?
Yes. Hide Drafts in Menus is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Hide Drafts in Menus safe to use in 2026?
Hide Drafts in Menus is a solid plugin choice in 2026, with a few things worth checking first. It runs on 1K+ sites, is rated 5/5 and was last updated 4 months ago, and scores 67/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Hide Drafts in Menus?
Hide Drafts in Menus is active on 1K+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 19,152 times since it launched in November 2016. It was downloaded 472 times in the last 30 days.
Does Hide Drafts in Menus work with WordPress 7.1?
Hide Drafts in Menus is officially tested up to WordPress 7.0.6, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Hide Drafts in Menus last updated?
The latest version, 1.6.0.1, was released on May 18, 2026 (4 months ago).
Who makes Hide Drafts in Menus?
Hide Drafts in Menus is developed and maintained by Room 34 Creative Services, LLC.
What are the best alternatives to Hide Drafts in Menus?
The most popular alternatives to Hide Drafts in Menus are Public Post Preview (100K+ installs), Share a Draft (3K+ installs) and WP-DraftsForFriends (1K+ installs).
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