# Hiding items by role - Adminline 1.x documentation

> Hide menu items from everyone or from chosen roles, and choose whether their screens are hidden only or also blocked.

Most people need a fraction of the admin menu. Hiding the rest makes the admin easier to find your way around, and blocking keeps people from opening the menu screens they don't need.

## Hiding an item

1. Click **Edit** on the item.
2. Under **Visibility**, choose:
   - **Shown to everyone who can open it** (the default);
   - **Hidden from everyone**;
   - **Hidden from these roles:** and tick the roles.
3. Under **When hidden**, choose **Hidden only** or **Hidden and blocked** (see below).
4. Save the menu.

![Hiding Comments from Shop Managers](https://storage.extendiment.com/media/913/screenshot-4.png)

The row gets a label saying who it's hidden from. Hiding a top-level item hides its whole submenu too.

**Someone with several roles** sees an item as long as any of their roles may. For example, if Comments is hidden from Shop Managers but not Editors, someone who is both still sees Comments.

## Hidden only, or hidden and blocked

- **Hidden only**: the item leaves the menu, but its screen still opens from a link or a bookmark. Use it to tidy the menu.
- **Hidden and blocked**: opening the item's own screen by its address shows "This screen isn't available", with a button back to the Dashboard. Use it when people really shouldn't be on that screen.

Blocking covers the screens the menu item leads to, not the screens reached from them: blocking **Posts → All Posts** doesn't block the screen for editing a post, if someone has a link to it.

![A blocked screen](https://storage.extendiment.com/media/914/screenshot-7.png)

If the Dashboard itself is blocked for someone, they go to the first screen in their menu when they log in, instead of seeing the message.

> [!IMPORTANT]
> Blocking is about screens, not permissions. Adminline never changes roles or capabilities: what people can do (through forms, the block editor, the REST API, other plugins' screens) is still up to their role. To take a capability away from a role, use a role editor.

## The admin bar follows

When an item is hidden from someone, links to its screen in the admin bar go too: Comments, Updates, **+ New → Post** (when Posts → Add Post is hidden), the site menu's Dashboard, Themes, Widgets and Menus, and plugins' admin bar links. This works on your site's pages as well as in the admin.

## What can't be hidden from administrators

Two screens always stay in the menu for administrators, and are never blocked for them, whatever the settings: **Settings → Admin Menu** (Adminline itself) and **Plugins**. So is the top-level item they're in. You can still hide them from other roles. That way nobody can lock themselves out by accident; see **Safe mode and reset** for everything else.

Source: https://extendiment.com/plugins/adminline/docs/1.x/hiding-by-role