Hide or Show Out-of-Stock Products for WooCommerce

WooCommerce gives you one switch for sold-out products: hide all of them, or show all of them. That is fine for a small store, but it gets in the way when some out-of-stock products should stay visible (a best seller that is restocking next week, a seasonal item, a page that ranks well in Google) while others should disappear from the shop.

Hide or Show Out-of-Stock Products for WooCommerce lets you decide, product by product, where each out-of-stock product appears:

• Shop and search results – fully visible

• Shop only – listed in the shop, left out of search results

• Search results only – left out of the shop, still found by search

• Hidden – left out of both the shop and search results

Everything is managed from one screen under Products -> Out-of-Stock Visibility. The screen lists only your out-of-stock products, so you can review them, change one, or update dozens at once.

Key benefits

• Keep sold-out products that still earn traffic. Leave restocking, seasonal, or high-demand products visible instead of losing them from the catalog.

• Hide the ones that should not be there. Remove discontinued or low-priority sold-out products from the shop and search without touching your stock data.

• Stop guessing what customers can see. A built-in report shows how your out-of-stock products are currently exposed.

• Work fast on large catalogs. Search, filter, and bulk-update instead of editing products one at a time.

Features

• Per-product visibility for out-of-stock products: shop and search results, shop only, search results only, or hidden

• Bulk update: select several products and apply one visibility option to all of them

• Dedicated list of out-of-stock products, with product image, SKU, price, categories, current visibility, and an Update button for each row

• Search the list by product name or SKU

• Filter the list by visibility mode, by product category, and by how long a product has been out of stock (less than 7 days, 7+, 30+, 60+, or 90+ days)

• “Days Out of Stock” column showing how long each product has been continuously out of stock and the date it went out of stock; sort the list by it

• Reporting snapshot: total out-of-stock products, a count for each visibility mode, a category breakdown, and a “Needs review” list of sold-out products that are still visible to customers

• Summary cards and quick filters that jump straight to the matching products in the table

• Optional setting to restore normal visibility automatically when a product is back in stock

• Works with WooCommerce’s own catalog visibility settings, so there is no custom product template or shortcode to maintain

• Translation-ready

How it works

• Activate the plugin (WooCommerce must be active).

• Go to Products -> Out-of-Stock Visibility.

• Review the reporting snapshot, then use the table to set each out-of-stock product to the visibility you want, individually or in bulk.

When a product’s visibility is changed, the plugin applies it using WooCommerce’s standard product catalog visibility.

Good to know before you install

• The plugin turns off WooCommerce’s global “Hide out of stock items” setting while it is active. It saves your previous value when you activate the plugin and restores it when you deactivate it. (If you first activated the plugin on version 2.3.0 or earlier, no previous value was saved, so the setting stays off after you deactivate.) Per-product settings in this plugin replace that global switch, and if you or another plugin turn the WooCommerce setting back on while this plugin is active, it is turned off again on the next page load.

• Out-of-stock products with no saved choice are shown. If your store was hiding every sold-out product before you installed the plugin, those products will appear in the shop and search results after activation until you set them to Hidden. Open the Needs review list after activating and hide what you do not want customers to see.

• Hiding a product removes it from shop and search listings. It does not block the product page. Customers who already have a direct link can still open it.

• Restocking. The management screen lists only out-of-stock products, so a restocked product leaves the list. With the setting “Restore normal visibility when a product is back in stock” turned on, a product you set to Shop only, Search results only, or Hidden returns to Shop and search results when it is restocked. With the setting off, it keeps its choice (for example, stays Hidden) until you change its catalog visibility in the product editor. The setting is on by default for new installations. If you are updating from an earlier version, it is off until you turn it on, so nothing changes on your store unexpectedly.

• The plugin does not change stock quantities or stock status, and it does not replace WooCommerce inventory management.

• The management screen lists published products that WooCommerce marks as out of stock.

Who this plugin is for

• WooCommerce store owners who want to keep some sold-out products visible and hide others

• Stores with seasonal, limited-run, or frequently restocked products

• Stores that want to keep out-of-stock product pages in the catalog for search engine visibility

• Store managers who need to review and update out-of-stock products in bulk

• Agencies and developers who manage WooCommerce stores for clients

Practical examples

• A popular item sells out on Friday and returns on Wednesday. Keep it visible in the shop and search so customers can still find it.

• A seasonal product is out of stock until next year. Leave it findable in search but remove it from the main shop listing.

• A discontinued product has no replacement. Set it to Hidden.

• You inherited a large catalog. Filter by “90+ days” out of stock and bulk-hide everything that has been unavailable for a quarter.