Disable WordPress Automatic Update Emails

WordPress sends an email every time it automatically updates core, a plugin, or a theme. On a site with many plugins this becomes noise fast. Here’s how to turn it off cleanly.

The plugin

Create wp-content/mu-plugins/disable-auto-update-emails.php:

<?php

add_filter('auto_core_update_send_email', '__return_false');
add_filter('auto_plugin_update_send_email', '__return_false');
add_filter('auto_theme_update_send_email', '__return_false');

That’s it. No activation needed - files in mu-plugins/ are loaded automatically on every request.

Why mu-plugins?

A regular plugin can be deactivated accidentally (or by WordPress itself during a troubled update). A must-use plugin can’t be deactivated from the admin UI, so the filter stays in place even after a core update.

What this disables

Filter	Email suppressed
auto_core_update_send_email	WordPress core update success/failure
auto_plugin_update_send_email	Plugin auto-updates
auto_theme_update_send_email	Theme auto-updates

Manual updates triggered from the admin dashboard are unaffected - those don’t go through the auto-update email path.

Verify it works

Use WP-CLI to confirm the filters return false:

wp eval "var_dump(apply_filters('auto_core_update_send_email', true, null));"
wp eval "var_dump(apply_filters('auto_plugin_update_send_email', true, null));"
wp eval "var_dump(apply_filters('auto_theme_update_send_email', true, null));"

Each should output bool(false).