apply_filters( “auto_update_{$type}”, bool|null $update, object $item )

Filters whether to automatically update core, a plugin, a theme, or a language.

Description

The dynamic portion of the hook name, $type, refers to the type of update being checked.

Possible hook names include:

  • auto_update_core
  • auto_update_plugin
  • auto_update_theme
  • auto_update_translation

Since WordPress 3.7, minor and development versions of core, and translations have been auto-updated by default. New installs on WordPress 5.6 or higher will also auto-update major versions by default. Starting in 5.6, older sites can opt-in to major version auto-updates, and auto-updates for plugins and themes.

See the ‘allow_dev_auto_core_updates’, ‘allow_minor_auto_core_updates’, and ‘allow_major_auto_core_updates’ filters for a more straightforward way to adjust core updates.

Parameters

$updatebool|null
Whether to update. The value of null is internally used to detect whether nothing has hooked into this filter.
$itemobject
The update offer.

Source

$update = apply_filters( "auto_update_{$type}", $update, $item );

Changelog

VersionDescription
5.5.0The $update parameter accepts the value of null.
3.7.0Introduced.

User Contributed Notes

  1. Skip to note 4 content

    Note that the filters mentioned above will not stop WP from visiting the update endpoints using the HTTP API. The following URLs will be checked on a regular bases even with the filters above set to disable updates:

    https://api.wordpress.org/core/version-check/...
    https://api.wordpress.org/plugins/update-check/...
    https://api.wordpress.org/themes/update-check/...

    If you want to completely stop update checking, e.g. for performance reasons while coding or during acceptance testing, removing the following filters will ensure that the update endpoints are not checked:

    /**
    * ! These actually stop the HTTP API requests!
    * Copied from WP_Customize_Manager->construct()
    */
    remove_action( 'admin_init', '_maybe_update_core' );
    remove_action( 'admin_init', '_maybe_update_plugins' );
    remove_action( 'admin_init', '_maybe_update_themes' );

  2. Skip to note 6 content

    To enable automatic updates for a plugin programmatically, you can use the WordPress functions and filters available. Here’s an example of how you can achieve this:

    /**
     * Enable automatic updates for a specific plugin.
     *
     * @param boolean $value Current auto-update status.
     * @param object  $item  Plugin update object.
     * @return boolean Updated auto-update status.
     */
    function wpdocs_enable_plugin_auto_updates( $value, $item ) {
        if ( 'your-plugin-slug' === $item->slug ) {
            return true; // Enable auto-updates for the specified plugin
        }
    
        return $value; // Preserve auto-update status for other plugins
    }
    add_filter( 'auto_update_plugin', 'wpdocs_enable_plugin_auto_updates', 10, 2 );

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