WordPress, by default will only automatically update the installed version of core if it’s a maintenance or security release, or an update to a development release if you’re running a development version.
| Update | Default on New WordPress Install |
| WordPress Core (Major Updates) | No |
| WordPress Core (Minor Updates) | Yes |
| WordPress Core (Development Updates) | Yes |
| Plugins | No |
| Themes | No |
Through the wp-admin dashboard, you can enable WordPress Core (Major Updates), plugin updates and theme updates. Theme updates can be a bit of a pain, since you need to enable these one by one.
WP-CLI, the command line tool for WordPress, can make changing these settings easier.
Enable Auto Updates
To enable updates for all major core releases, type:
wp option update auto_update_core_major enabled
This will update WordPress version 6.4.0 to 6.5.0, for example. This option is disabled by default on new WordPress installations.
To enable updates for all minor core releases, type:
wp option update auto_update_core_minor enabled
This will update WordPress version 6.4.1 to 6.4.2, for example. This option is enabled by default on new WordPress installations.
To enable updates for all development releases, type:
wp option update auto_update_core_dev enabled
This will update WordPress version 6.4.1-beta1 to 6.4.2-beta2, for example. This option is enabled by default on new WordPress installations.
To enable auto-update for all plugins, type:
wp plugin auto-updates enable --all
To enable auto-update for all themes, type:
wp theme auto-updates enable --all
Disabling Auto Updates
To disable updates for all major core releases, type:
wp option update auto_update_core_major disabled
To disable updates for all minor core releases, type:
wp option update auto_update_core_minor disabled
To disable updates for all development releases, type:
wp option update auto_update_core_dev disabled
To disable auto-update for all plugins, type:
wp plugin auto-updates disable --all
To disable auto-update for all themes, type:
wp theme auto-updates disable --all
This is a great article! I’m wondering if it’s possible to have auto major version updates automatically, but only once it’s stabilized a bit.
So if you have 6.3.2 installed, and 6.4.0 comes out, the .0 release will be ignored until 6.4.1 comes out.
Thanks Kirk!
It looks like this plugin has done a really nice job of implementing exactly that option: https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-auto-updater/
If you were looking for how to code it, WordPress has several filters that affect the auto updating process. See allow_minor_auto_core_updates as an example, called from the should_update_to_version( $offered_ver ) function in https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/blob/6.4/src/wp-admin/includes/class-core-upgrader.php#L275