Widget Categories

Elementor Core Intermediate

Elementor widget categories are used to organize the widgets into groups. When Elementor is initialized, it registers several default categories.

Categories are only displayed in the widgets panel if they have widgets assigned to them.

External developers can create new categories and display their widgets separately, in branded categories.

Using Widget Categories

We use widget categories when registering new Elementor widgets. By extending the \Elementor\Widget_Base class, we are inheriting the \Elementor\Widget_Base::get_categories() method which returns the general category by default.

To assign the widget to a different category, we need to override this method and return our new category the following way:

class Elementor_Test_Widget extends \Elementor\Widget_Base {

	public function get_categories(): array {
		return [ 'basic' ];
	}

}

Default Categories

When you select which category to assign your widget to, you can select one of the default categories:

Label	Name	Package	Description
Basic	basic	Elementor	Category for basic widgets
Pro	pro-elements	ElementorPro	Category for advanced widgets
General	general	Elementor	Category for general widgets
Site	theme-elements	ElementorPro	Category for site & theme widgets
WooCommerce	woocommerce-elements	ElementorPro	Category for WooCommerce widgets
{Custom}			Custom categories added by external developers
WordPress	wordpress	WordPress	Category for WordPress widgets

Or you can register your own category.

Creating New Categories

Elementor allows developers to add new widget categories in which to group their own custom widgets. Registering a new widget category is done using the elementor/elements/categories_registered action.

Note: When creating a new category, you need to supply the category name/slug, category title/label and the category icon.

function add_elementor_widget_categories( $elements_manager ) {

	$elements_manager->add_category(
		'first-category',
		[
			'title' => esc_html__( 'First Category', 'textdomain' ),
			'icon' => 'fa fa-plug',
		]
	);
	$elements_manager->add_category(
		'second-category',
		[
			'title' => esc_html__( 'Second Category', 'textdomain' ),
			'icon' => 'fa fa-plug',
		]
	);

}
add_action( 'elementor/elements/categories_registered', 'add_elementor_widget_categories' );