How to turn off Notes in WordPress (or keep them when comments are off)

If you’ve left a comment in Google Docs, you already know how Notes work in WordPress. They let you and the people you work with leave feedback on individual blocks in the editor, without it ending up in the published post. I rarely write with anyone but myself these days, but back when I wrote for tech and video game sites, Notes would have saved my fellow writers and me from stepping on each other’s toes more than once.

Notes were added in WordPress 6.9, and they’re turned on for posts and pages by default. I get that it’s not for everyone, though. If you already work collaboratively in a different tool, like Google Docs, and just use WordPress for publishing, Notes can lead people to start discussions you’d rather keep elsewhere. WordPress doesn’t have a setting to turn Notes off, but it only takes a few lines of code, or a plugin.

Behind the scenes, Notes are stored as comments. That means that the way you turn off comments on your site can turn off Notes too, whether you want to or not. In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at both: how to turn off Notes, and how to keep them when comments are off.

How to turn off Notes

Whether a post type has Notes is part of its editor support. WordPress registers posts and pages with Notes turned on, so to turn them off, we register the editor support again without them. The best place for the code is a must-use plugin, so it keeps working whichever theme you use, and can’t be deactivated by accident:

1. Connect to your site with an SFTP client, and open the wp-content folder.
2. Create a folder called mu-plugins, if there isn’t one already.
3. In it, create a file called turn-off-notes.php with the code below.

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: Turn Off Notes
 * Description: Turns off Notes in the editor for posts and pages.
 */
/**
 * Replaces the editor support for posts and pages with a version without Notes.
 */
function my_turn_off_notes() {
	foreach ( array( 'post', 'page' ) as $post_type ) {
		add_post_type_support( $post_type, 'editor' );
	}
}
add_action( 'init', 'my_turn_off_notes' );

Reload the editor, and “Add note” is gone from the block options menu. If you only want to turn off Notes for pages, remove 'post' from the array, or the other way around. Custom post types only have Notes if they’ve been registered with them, so you can leave those out.

Notes that were already added aren’t deleted. They stay in the database, so they’ll come back if you remove the plugin later.

If you’re not comfortable with code and SFTP clients, the Disable Comments plugin can turn off Notes too. In “Settings” → “Disable Comments”, turn on “Close Certain Comment Types” and check “Notes – WordPress 6.9+ (note)”. Notes then stop being accepted, while comments stay open for your visitors.

How to keep Notes when comments are off

If you’ve closed comments with the settings in WordPress, by unchecking “Allow people to submit comments on new posts” in “Settings” → “Discussion”, or by closing comments on individual posts, Notes keep working. WordPress lets you add Notes to posts where comments are closed, since they’re for the people editing the post, not its visitors.

Plugins that turn off comments entirely are a different story. If you’ve used the Disable Comments plugin to disable comments “Everywhere”, as I describe in how to disable comments in WordPress, it blocks Notes too, and saving one shows a “Comments are disabled” message. Fortunately, the plugin has a setting for exactly this:

1. Go to “Settings” → “Disable Comments”.
2. Turn on “Enable Certain Comment Types”.
3. Check “Notes – WordPress 6.9+ (note)” below it, and click “Save Changes”.

Comments stay off for your visitors, while Notes work in the editor again. If you use another plugin or a code snippet to turn off comments, and Notes stop working, check whether it has a similar setting, or turn off comments with the WordPress settings instead.