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Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains benchmarked tools that may compensate us. We only recommend hardware and software tested in our lab environments for maximum LCP and INP efficiency.

How to Remove Unused JavaScript in WordPress

Identify and conditionally unload plugin scripts that slow down pages where they are not needed.

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Every WordPress plugin ships JavaScript whether you need it on a given page or not. Use wp_dequeue_script() to conditionally remove scripts on pages where they are not needed. This reduces Total Blocking Time and improves INP scores.

How to audit unused JavaScript

Open Chrome DevTools Coverage panel (Ctrl+Shift+P → Coverage) to see exactly how much of each script is executed on each page. Sort by Unused Bytes to find the worst offenders.

Conditionally dequeue scripts

add_action("wp_enqueue_scripts", "dequeue_unused", 100);\nfunction dequeue_unused() {\n    if (!is_page("contact")) {\n        wp_dequeue_script("contact-form-7");\n    }\n    if (!is_woocommerce()) {\n        wp_dequeue_script("wc-cart-fragments");\n    }\n}

Expected gains

Removing unused scripts can reduce TBT by 100–500ms and cut JavaScript payload by 50–300KB per page.

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About the Lab & Author

This benchmark and optimization guide was written by the Performance Engineering team at CoreVitalsLab. With over a decade of experience optimizing high-traffic WooCommerce stores and enterprise WordPress deployments, we focus exclusively on data-driven TTFB reduction, caching architecture, and passing Core Web Vitals.

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