WordPress Shows a Pending Plugin Update

Does your WordPress web site incorrectly and constantly inform you of an available Plugin update but you can’t find which one needs the update?

You’re not alone. In this article I cover why this might be occurring and how to reveal which specific Plugin or Theme is responsible for this annoyance.

The usual reason for this issue is due to a Plugin which was included or embedded with your presently active WordPress theme. Some developers include a licensed copy of commercially available WordPress Plugins with their theme. The only issue here is when the developers don’t keep up with the Plugin’s updates. Thus WordPress detected the outdated plugin, but it won’t appear within the Updates or Plugins backend pages.

We can add a snippet into our theme’s functions.php file to reveal which specific plugin or theme is having the issue.

Find Which Plugin Needs an Update #

The following debugging code snippet, provided by Kevin Leary, will display which particular Plugin or Theme is generating the “update available” notice within your WordPress installation.

To find out which plugin or theme is generating the pending update notice on your WordPress installation, add the following code to your functions.php file (excluding the opening and closing <?php ?> tags) of the currently active theme or child-theme (preferred).

Once saved to your functions file, append ?debug_updates to your WordPress backend URL after /wp-admin/. Example: “http://yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/?debug_updates”

End of File #

I welcome your thoughts, questions or suggestions on my article regarding which plugin or theme is generating the pending update notice on your WordPress web site.

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Let me know if you found any errors within my article or if I may further assist you by answering any additional questions you may have.