=== The Off Switch (formerly WP Avoid Slow) === Contributors: deshabhishek007, fitehal Tags: performance, speed, optimize, bloat, core-web-vitals Requires at least: 5.0 Tested up to: 6.9.1 Requires PHP: 7.4 Stable tag: 1.9.3 License: GPLv2 or later License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html Turn off WordPress default features your site doesn't use. 71 independent toggles, pure PHP hooks, safe defaults - no .htaccess, no upsell. == Description == WordPress prioritises backwards compatibility. That's a feature. It also means every install ships with things you didn't ask for. An emoji CDN script. An oEmbed script. A Windows Live Writer manifest (discontinued 2017). Dashicons loaded for logged-out visitors. Heartbeat polling every 15 seconds. A version tag that tells the world exactly which WordPress you're running. None of these are bugs. They're just not needed on most sites. **The Off Switch lets you disable each one, individually.** = The Off Switches = * **Emoji script** - ~15 KB + 1 HTTP request. Browsers handle emoji natively. * **Embed script** - ~4 KB + oEmbed discovery links in ``. * **RSD link** - Really Simple Discovery. Only needed for legacy XML-RPC clients. * **WLW manifest** - Windows Live Writer has been discontinued since 2017. * **WP version tag** - Stops advertising your WordPress version to the world. * **Shortlink** - Removes `` from `` and HTTP headers. Search engines ignore it. * **Asset query strings** - Strips `?ver=` from scripts, styles, and WP 6.5+ Script Modules so CDNs and proxies cache correctly. * **XML-RPC** - Closes a common brute-force attack vector. * **Heartbeat API** - Reduces admin polling from every 15 s to every 60 s. * **Dashicons (frontend)** - ~35 KB (CSS + font) saved for every logged-out visitor. * **REST API Discovery Link** - Removes `` from ``. Safe to remove on standard sites. * **RSS Feed Links** - Removes feed autodiscovery `` tags from ``. Modern browsers no longer act on them. Leave enabled if you publish an RSS feed. * **Speculation Rules (WP 6.8+)** - Disables the WP 6.8+ Speculation Rules API that prefetches links before users click. Can inflate analytics, increase server bandwidth, and trigger consent flows on unfetched pages. * **Disable All Feeds** - Redirects all RSS and Atom feed URLs to the homepage. For sites with no RSS subscribers. * **Comment Auto-Links** - Stops WordPress from converting plain-text URLs in comments into clickable links. * **Editor Autosave** - Deregisters the autosave script that POSTs editor content to the server every 60 seconds. For teams that prefer explicit saves. * **DNS Prefetch** - Removes all `` hints from ``. Redundant when Emojis and Embeds are already disabled. * **Recent Comments Inline CSS** - WordPress outputs a small inline `