I have a site that literally requires a specific plugin always be active for things to work. It has a lot of very complicated code, and two things must never ever happen to this:

1. It should never be disabled
2. It should never be updated by WordPress

Well. Okay. Let’s do that.

A Caveat

If you don’t have a way in place to update and secure the plugin you’re hiding, DON’T DO THIS. Once you hide it, people won’t know to update it and, in fact, won’t be able to. Because you’re also preventing traditional updates. In my case, I have a git repository that triggers a push (plus some other magic).

Again. Unless you’ve got something set up to handle updates, don’t do this.

Now let’s do this.

Never Disable Me (by Hiding)

To do this, we need to know the folder name and filename of the plugin, such as ‘my-plugin/my-plugin.php. If you want to hide the plugin you've put the code in, you can useplugin_basename( FILE )` instead, which is what I’ve done.

add_action( 'pre_current_active_plugins', 'mysite_hide_my_plugins' );
function mysite_hide_my_plugins() {
	global $wp_list_table;

	$hide_plugins = array(
		plugin_basename( __FILE__ ),
	);
	$curr_plugins = $wp_list_table->items;
	foreach ( $curr_plugins as $plugin => $data ) {
		if (in_array( $plugin, $hide_plugins ) ) {
			unset( $wp_list_table->items[$plugin] );
		}
	}
}

If you were writing a plugin to hide a lot of things, you would change the array to list all of them. But since this is a ‘hide myself’ deal, it’s easier to put it in the plugin itself.

The added bonus to making the file path dynamic is that if someone gets clever and renamed the folder or file, it would still work. Neener.

Stop My Updates

Now this one again is easier if you put it in the plugin you’re disabling updates for, because again you can use plugin_basename( __FILE__ ) to detect the plugin. If you’re not, then you’ll need to make an array of names. But that should get you started.

add_filter( 'http_request_args', 'mysite_disable_my_plugin_update', 10, 2 );
function mysite_disable_my_plugin_update( $return, $url ) {
	if ( 0 === strpos( $url, 'https://api.wordpress.org/plugins/update-check/' ) ) {
		$my_plugin = plugin_basename( __FILE__ );
		$plugins   = json_decode( $return['body']['plugins'], true );
		unset( $plugins['plugins'][$my_plugin] );
		unset( $plugins['active'][array_search( $my_plugin, $plugins['active'] )] );
		$return['body']['plugins'] = json_encode( $plugins );
	}
	return $return;
}

What Does It Look Like?

Nothing, really. You’ve hidden everything. Congratulations. Now you don’t have to worry about admins or WordPress updating your plugin. Or worse.