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Disable Dashicons Frontend

Remove the Dashicons icon font (~50KB) from your frontend pages when the WordPress admin bar isn’t showing—giving your visitors a faster page load.

Use Cases

  • Reduce page weight for logged-out visitors by eliminating an icon font they don’t need
  • Improve Core Web Vitals scores by removing unused CSS and font requests
  • Speed up initial page render on mobile devices with slower connections

How It Works

  1. Enable the module in Switchboard
  2. Toggle on “Enable Dashicons Removal” in the settings
  3. When a visitor loads your site without the admin bar visible, Dashicons CSS is dequeued
  4. Logged-in users with the admin bar still see Dashicons normally

The module hooks into wp_enqueue_scripts and removes the dashicons stylesheet when is_admin_bar_showing() returns false.

Settings

SettingTypeDefaultDescription
Enable Dashicons RemovalToggleDisabledConfirm you want to disable Dashicons on the frontend

Where to Find It

Location: Switchboard → Modules → Optimization → Disable Dashicons Frontend

After enabling, verify by viewing your site as a logged-out user and checking the page source—the dashicons stylesheet should no longer appear.

Compatibility Warning

Do not enable this module if you use a frontend page builder.

Page builders like Bricks, Elementor, Oxygen, Beaver Builder, and others rely on Dashicons for their media library interfaces and admin UI components. Disabling Dashicons will cause:

  • Broken media upload buttons
  • Missing icons in editor panels
  • Incorrectly displayed UI elements

Only enable this module if you edit your site exclusively through the WordPress admin (not frontend editing).

Performance Impact

Removing Dashicons saves:

  • 1 HTTP request (the CSS file)
  • ~50KB of data (the font file loaded by the CSS)
  • Render-blocking CSS removed from the critical path

On a typical site, this shaves 50-100ms off load time for logged-out visitors.

FAQ

Will logged-in admins still see their admin bar correctly?Yes. The module only removes Dashicons when the admin bar is hidden. If you’re logged in and the admin bar is visible, Dashicons load normally.
I’m not using a page builder. Is it safe to enable?If you only edit your site through the WordPress admin (Posts, Pages, Customizer) and never use frontend editing, you’re safe to enable this module.
My theme uses Dashicons. Will this break it?Some themes use Dashicons for icons on the frontend (like social icons or navigation). If your theme relies on Dashicons, enabling this module will break those icons. Check your theme documentation or test on a staging site first.
How can I verify Dashicons were removed?
  1. Log out of WordPress (or use an incognito window)
  2. Visit your site
  3. Open browser DevTools (F12 or right-click → Inspect)
  4. Go to the Network tab and filter by “CSS”
  5. Refresh the page—you should not see any dashicons file loading

Use browser DevTools to audit what CSS your site loads. You might find other unused stylesheets to remove for even faster load times.

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