Getting rid of Howdy

If you’ve used WordPress before, you’ve probably noticed that the admin toolbar says “Howdy, Matt” in the top right. [other usernames are available]

Much as I enjoy a good “Howdy”, it doesn’t always seem very professional so I thought I would have a little go at removing it. Most snippets that I could find involved doing a search and replace for “Howdy, “ which kinda works but might have problems on non-English sites.

My version is below, which also removes the WordPress help logo on the far left. Place this in a functions.php or mu-plugins file.

function boswall_remove_howdy() {
 global $wp_admin_bar;
 $current_user = wp_get_current_user();

 //Remove the WordPress logo
 $wp_admin_bar->remove_node('wp-logo');

 //Remove the annoying "Howdy, " before username
 $wp_admin_bar->add_node(array(
  'id' => 'my-account',
  'title' => $current_user->display_name
 ));
}
add_action( 'wp_before_admin_bar_render', 'boswall_remove_howdy' );

You could also change this line to have any text instead of “Howdy, “.

'title' => 'Greetings and felicitations, ' . $current_user->display_name

Much better!