Hide empty product categories from Main Navigation in WooCommerce
· by Daniel
You can of course add unlimited WooCommerce Product Categories into your main navigation. But sometimes they get empty because of Stock change or similar.
If you automatically want to hide empty product categories in your WordPress Navigation place the code below into your functions.php file.
add_filter( 'wp_get_nav_menu_items', 'nav_remove_empty_category_menu_item', 10, 3 );
function nav_remove_empty_category_menu_item ( $items, $menu, $args ) {
global $wpdb;
$nopost = $wpdb->get_col( "SELECT term_taxonomy_id FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy WHERE count = 0" );
foreach ( $items as $key => $item ) {
if ( ( 'taxonomy' == $item->type ) && ( in_array( $item->object_id, $nopost ) ) ) {
unset( $items );
}
}
return $items;
}
Questions & answers (4)
MENOTYOUJune 3, 2026
Hidden everything
ValmerJune 26, 2024
in fact, this code allows me to hide an empty category. The problem is that when this same category fills up again, it is automatically placed at the bottom of the menu in “Appearance > Menu. I would like it not to move in position. Can you help me?
ValmerJune 20, 2024
Good morning, I integrated this same code to hide a category when it is empty and it works well. But I would like it to be positioned in the same place when a product is added again.
Today, it is positioned at the very bottom of the menu.
Do you have a solution to hide this category unless it moves around?
Thank you for your help
Jon-Paul SmithApril 17, 2022
Hi there,
Is it possible to hide product categories and / or subcategories if the products in them are out of stock please?
So for example I have the ‘Out of stock visibility – Hide out of stock items from the catalog’ in Woocommerce settings checked, so out of stock products are not being displayed.
However I also have a category for ‘Elektra Comic Books’ that has two subcategories:
Elektra Vol 3 (2014)
Elektra: Black, White & Blood (2022)
Elektra Vol 3 (2014) has a comic in stock, but Elektra: Black, White & Blood (2022) has no comics in stock and displays the ‘No products were found matching your selection.’ message when entered.
Is there some code I can use so that the Elektra: Black, White & Blood (2022) subcategory (or any other subcategory that has no products in stock) is not displayed, but if new stock is added it will become visible / available again?