WordPress.org has released an official browser extension. It works in Google Chrome, Chromium-based browsers, and Safari on macOS, and it gives you quick access to your WordPress dashboard from anywhere on the web.
What it does
If you run a WordPress site, you already know the admin bar. It sits at the top of every page while you’re signed in, giving you shortcuts to your dashboard, the editor, and your profile. It’s handy, but it also gets in the way. It takes up space on screen, so the page you’re looking at is never quite what a visitor sees. On sites with sticky headers or scroll effects, it can even cause visual glitches that look like bugs.
Turning the admin bar off in your profile settings fixes that, but you lose the shortcuts too. The new extension solves both problems at once. It hides the admin bar on the sites you choose, or on every site by default, while keeping the shortcuts one click away in your browser toolbar. Bringing the full bar back takes two clicks, no trip to the dashboard required.
The toolbar icon also tells you, at a glance, whether the site you’re currently viewing runs WordPress and whether you’re signed in. On sites you manage, opening the extension gives you a direct shortcut to the dashboard or straight to the editor for the exact post, page, or template you’re viewing, including template-based pages on block themes.
Extra tools for developers and editors
A few features go beyond hiding the admin bar. The extension can draw block boundaries over a live page, open a phone-sized preview window to check how a page looks on mobile, reload a page with cache busting, or clear cookies and local storage for the site you’re on. None of it requires installing a plugin, so the same tools work on any WordPress site you visit, not just ones you manage.
WordPress.org says everything happens locally in your browser. Your saved sites and preferences stay on your device, and the extension doesn’t send data anywhere or track your activity.
Where it came from
The extension started as an independent project built by developer Jake Gold before becoming an official WordPress.org project with support from Automattic co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Fabian Kägy, a WordPress core contributor at Fueled (formerly 10up), helped shape its early design, alongside contributor Khokan Sardar and testers from Fueled.
It’s open source on GitHub, where WordPress.org says bug reports and pull requests are welcome. You can download it now from the Chrome Web Store or the Mac App Store for Safari.
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