WooCommerce: Show Empty Product Categories

By default, empty WooCommerce product categories (i.e. categories which have no published products) will not display on your Shop page.

This makes a lot of sense and avoids that customers land on empty pages… BUT sometimes you might have different needs and require that users still see these categories when the shop display is set to “Show Categories”.

Thankfully there is a quick one-line fix that you can copy / paste in your functions.php to show empty categories… enjoy!

Display empty categories @ WooCommerce Shop page

PHP Snippet: Show Empty WooCommerce Product Categories

/**
 * @snippet       Show Empty Categories @ Shop Page
 * @how-to        Get CustomizeWoo.com FREE
 * @author        Rodolfo Melogli
 * @compatible    WooCommerce 5
 * @community     https://businessbloomer.com/club/
 */

add_filter( 'woocommerce_product_subcategories_hide_empty', '__return_false' );

PHP Snippet (Storefront Theme): Show Empty WooCommerce Product Categories @ Homepage

/**
 * @snippet       Show Empty Categories @ Homepage
 * @how-to        Get CustomizeWoo.com FREE
 * @author        Rodolfo Melogli
 * @compatible    WooCommerce 5
 * @community     https://businessbloomer.com/club/
 */

add_filter( 'storefront_product_categories_shortcode_args', 'bblomer_storefront_homepage_show_empty_cats' );

function bblomer_storefront_homepage_show_empty_cats( $args ) {
  $args['hide_empty'] = 0;
  return $args;
}

Where to add custom code?

You should place custom PHP in functions.php and custom CSS in style.css of your child theme: where to place WooCommerce customization?

This code still works, unless you report otherwise. To exclude conflicts, temporarily switch to the Storefront theme, disable all plugins except WooCommerce, and test the snippet again: WooCommerce troubleshooting 101

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Rodolfo Melogli

Business Bloomer Founder

Author, WooCommerce expert and WordCamp speaker, Rodolfo has worked as an independent WooCommerce freelancer since 2011. His goal is to help entrepreneurs and developers overcome their WooCommerce nightmares. Rodolfo loves travelling, chasing tennis & soccer balls and, of course, wood fired oven pizza. Follow @rmelogli

5 thoughts on “WooCommerce: Show Empty Product Categories

  1. Hi,
    This doesnt work for me when using a shortcode. It works on the woocommerce default storefront page but I want to show all the product categories using a shortcode on a custom page using:

    echo do_shortcode("[product_categories number='0' parent='0']"); 

    Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

    1. Hi Leanne, you should use the “hide_empty” shortcode parameter, and set that to 0

      1. Perfect, thanks so much.

  2. add_filter( 'woocommerce_product_subcategories_hide_empty', '__return_false' );

    This doesn’t work in Woocommerce 5

    1. Tried on a different theme already?

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