Removing the ‘Uncategorized’ Category in WordPress

If you’re lucky enough to find a WordPress theme that doesn’t display categories unless they’re used, then that’s great! Those themes do exist, but this post is for the themes that display all categories- including the default Uncategorized– whether they’re in use or not. For example:

When I go to the WordPress dashboard>Posts>Categories, I see this:

I don’t have the option to delete the Uncategorized category, which is slightly annoying. I can rename it (shown above), so that’s one workaround. But what if I just want to completely delete it?

Deleting the Uncategorized category

  1. Go to Settings>Writing
  2. Change the default category from Uncategorized to another category in use
  3. Click Save
  4. Go to Posts>Categories
  5. Check the box next to Uncategorized and click delete.

Boom! To think that I never took the time to figure this out before the other day. :) It’s so simple!!

11 Comments

  1. That’s one of those things new blog owners will never know about. Would be nice to have something on the front dashboard as a list of things worth checking on a new blog set up, as opposed to people finding out months, years, never later and having to back fix (or ignore)

    * rename the default category
    * create new ones
    * check permalinks (especially as the default one improves the category name)

  2. Thank you very much! I’ve been seeing 100s of WooCommerce users on the internet groups asking about this (including myself) and this is such a simple touch that many of us aren’t thinking of doing. Thanks very much for sharing this!

  3. Howard

    Interesting. If I have not even set up any catagories yet, would an option be to name it ‘one’ of the categories that I plan to use in my blog??
    Thanks
    PS If you always put a post into a certain category…. why not just leave the uncatagorized setting as it is and just start adding your catogories from their on??

  4. Pingback: How To Remove Uncategorized Categories From WordPress In 2020 - Ample Themes Blog

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