=== 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: 1.9.12 License: GPLv2 or later License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html Disable unused WordPress features and remove bloat. 94 toggles for performance, security hardening, and WooCommerce — pure PHP, 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. Disable what you don't need. Keep what you do. **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. * **XML-RPC Kill Requests** - Goes further than disabling: hard-kills any incoming xmlrpc.php request with a 403 before WordPress loads at all. * **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 `