How to Hide Featured Image in WordPress Post?

Fortunately, you can hide a featured image in a WordPress post easily. In this article, I’ll be talking about how you can do that.
WordPress has been introducing quite a few features recently. “Featured images” is one of the most significant ones.
However, it’s a default feature that applies to every post you create on WordPress; and, the company doesn’t tell you how you can hide it.
Using a featured image can improve your blog’s readability. However, there might be times when you don’t want to use a featured image on your posts.
Let’s get started.
How Do I Remove the Default Featured Image in WordPress?
Another name for featured images is post thumbnail. A featured image is a theme feature in WordPress. It allows the webmaster to use an image to represent their posts or pages.
It’s a great way to tell the readers what your posts/pages are about. The reader can know exactly what they are going to consume on your page.
Benefits of a Featured Image
Continuous text can be a little dull. A featured image is a great way to grab the reader’s attention and help them understand your post’s content.
A well-crafted featured image leaves a positive and lasting impression on the reader and encourages them to read your post.
However, there can be multiple reasons why you’d want to hide featured images from your posts.
Why Should You Learn How to Hide Featured Image?
You might need to hide featured images on your posts because they can add a little clutter to your WordPress posts. This is especially true when you don’t use them correctly.
Some WordPress themes do come with an option to hide featured images. However, many don’t offer that feature. So, you’ll have to find other ways to hide a featured image.
Let’s see how you can check whether your WordPress theme has the “Hide featured image” option or not.
Does Your WordPress Theme Have a “Hide Featured Post” Option?
If you think you don’t want featured images on your posts, the first thing you might want to do is check whether your theme offers the option.
How Do I Hide Featured Images on Individual Posts in WordPress?
Not all WordPress themes are built the same way. Some come with a lot of features while others don’t offer much flexibility.
The easy way to hide the default featured images on WordPress is by using the theme options. You might not want to disable the featured image option on all of your website’s pages.
Fortunately, you can disable the featured image option on individual posts in WordPress in your theme’s options.
You can see this option after visiting WordPress’ block editor. In case there is no option that lets you hide the featured image for that specific page, you need to consider other solutions.
Hide Featured Image on all Single Page/Post
A more technical way of hiding a featured image on WordPress posts and pages is by making a little tweak to the CSS code.
But, I only recommend this method to the webmasters that know at least a little bit of CSS and feel confident about it. You can access the back-end of your website by visiting:
Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS
But, this can only hide the featured images on those specific webpages.
Hiding Featured Image with a WordPress Plugin
If you don’t feel comfortable making changes to your site’s code, there are perfectly effective free and paid plugins to do the job for you.
Plus, you don’t want to go through the hassle of changing your WordPress theme just to have the option of hiding your featured image.
One way would be to visit the WordPress plugins repository and find a suitable plugin for the task. What you can do is, find a plugin that has enough 5-star ratings and positive customer reviews.
Make sure the plugin you go with doesn’t slow down your site. It should also be compatible with your site to work smoothly.
A plugin that I can recommend is the “Hide Featured Image” plugin.
Source: WordPress.org
The plugin is as simple as it gets. You don’t need to configure any settings to make it work on your site. You’d just need to edit your posts where you don’t want to show a featured image.
After installing the plugin, scroll down and you’ll see the “Hide Featured Image” option. Simply check mark the option to hide the featured image of that post.
You can then visit your post and see the plugin in action yourself. It won’t delete the featured image from the library; instead, it will “hide” the image. And, you can always unhide your featured image if you want to show it.
You can always uncheck the “Hide Featured Image” option on any post.
Conditionally Display Featured Image
Source: WordPress.org
This WordPress plugin is a simple and effective one as well. After you install the plugin, scroll down on the individual post and checkmark the “Display featured image in post lists only, hide on singular views”.
The plugin will hide the featured image on individual pages while keeping it visible on the post list or front page.
Additional Option (In Case the Above Don’t Work With Your WordPress Theme)
This one is an alternative in case your WordPress theme doesn’t support the above plugins. The “Quick Featured Images” plugin lets you set, replace, or delete featured images in bulk. So, you can select multiple posts/pages and hide their featured images in no time.
However, the downside to this one is that it doesn’t allow you to hide your featured images on the front end of your site.
How Do I Hide an Image in WordPress?
There are multiple ways of hiding an image in WordPress. You can either use a WordPress plugin or you can add a snippet of code into your post’s back-end.
There are multiple plugins that can do the task effectively. I’d recommend the “Hide Featured Image” plugin.
But, make sure your theme doesn’t offer the flexibility of hiding your featured image before opting for a plugin.
Because plugins add extra code to your website, they can make your site load slower. So, the less is better in this case.
How Do I Create a Custom Post Featured Image in WordPress?
WordPress custom post types allow you to create content beyond the traditional posts and pages. You can come up with a new custom post type and call it whatever you want.
For instance, if you are running a product review website, you can create a custom post type on product reviews. It can even have its own category.
How to Create a Custom Post Type in WordPress?
The simplest way to go about creating a custom post in WordPress is by using a plugin from the WordPress repository.
“Custom post type UI” is a suitable plugin for the task.
After you install the plugin on your WordPress dashboard, go to the left panel and click on the option “CPT UI”. Click “Add New” to create a new custom post.
This was all about creating custom post types in WordPress. What if you had to create custom post-type featured images?
If your theme supports custom post featured image type, you are good to go. If not, you can enable support for the custom post featured image type by using this tutorial.
How to Hide Custom Post Featured Image in WordPress?
Fortunately, there is nothing much you have to do to hide a custom post featured image as well. All you have to do is install a plugin that we’ve already discussed before.
The “Hide Featured Image” plugin works with any custom post type with featured image support.
The process of hiding the featured image would be the same. Simply, check the box “Hide Featured Image” after scrolling down a little on individual pages and see if it shows the image on the front end or not.
You can always come back again and show the featured image by unchecking the metabox.
Final Thoughts
This was all about hiding a featured image in WordPress. While featured images are mostly desirable mainly because of the visual appeal they add to your posts, you might not want to show them sometimes.
Luckily, you don’t need any coding knowledge or experience to hide the default featured images in WordPress.
All you have to do is, install a plugin and check-mark a metabox on your individual pages. You can also add a small snippet of code to your pages’ CSS if you feel comfortable doing that.