# Disabled Uncategorized shows in category dropdowns

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabled-uncategorized-shows-in-category-dropdowns/370541>\
**Category:** Bug\
**Created:** [June 17, 2025, 3:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabled-uncategorized-shows-in-category-dropdowns/370541 "2025-06-17T15:54:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 13

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2025, 2:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabled-uncategorized-shows-in-category-dropdowns/370541/13 "2025-08-25T02:12:32Z")

</div>

Oh I see, just did a bit of local debugging, I confirm this is 100% reproducible on default discourse installs.

Let me recap here:

There are 2 settings when it comes to uncategorized:

`allow_uncategorized_topics` default **off**  
`suppress_uncategorized_badge` default **on**

when allow `allow_uncategorized_topics` is disabled (default setup) we leak its presence into certain places.

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/5/7/6/5760f27a94c3d02f4b7e97778839b84bb4c049c5.png)

If you try to work around by enabling uncategorized so you can delete it, you are presented with:

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/e/8/9/e898632cbb145dcba269b35f1699d3bdf4f7e795.png)

In Discourse this category is super weird in that:

1. It **must** be there
2. It **can not** be deleted
3. We inject it into **lots** of logic into lots of places:

> <https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/a8ed5b19f95107a0dafc463e4cbf99d84ea42311/lib/validators/default_composer_category_validator.rb#L8-L14>

> <https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/a8ed5b19f95107a0dafc463e4cbf99d84ea42311/lib/guardian/topic_guardian.rb#L100-L108>

> <https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/a8ed5b19f95107a0dafc463e4cbf99d84ea42311/app/assets/javascripts/discourse/app/models/site.js#L252-L268>

> <https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/a8ed5b19f95107a0dafc463e4cbf99d84ea42311/app/assets/javascripts/discourse/app/services/composer.js#L1721-L1729>

> <https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/a8ed5b19f95107a0dafc463e4cbf99d84ea42311/app/assets/javascripts/discourse/app/lib/sidebar/helpers.js#L3-L9>

> <https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/a8ed5b19f95107a0dafc463e4cbf99d84ea42311/app/assets/javascripts/select-kit/addon/components/category-drop.js#L54-L54>

We can fix the leakage by just adding more and more conditionals, we are probably up to at least 10 now both on client and server.

Or we can **fix this at the core** , just allow admins to **delete the category** , then it goes away and we never need to check for it anyway.

My recommendation here is

1. Delete both settings and delete the hidden setting `uncategorized_category_id`
2. Have a concept of default category (which we already do) - we already have `default_composer_category`
3. 'uncategorized` then is no longer a special concept, less stuff to reason about.
4. Have a theme component for people that must have a “category without a badge”

The current search bug can be fixed with something like

```diff
diff --git a/app/assets/javascripts/select-kit/addon/components/search-advanced-category-chooser.js b/app/assets/javascripts/select-kit/addon/components/search-advanced-category-chooser.js
index a678919d16..83a9ed27db 100644
--- a/app/assets/javascripts/select-kit/addon/components/search-advanced-category-chooser.js
+++ b/app/assets/javascripts/select-kit/addon/components/search-advanced-category-chooser.js
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 import { classNames } from "@ember-decorators/component";
+import { setting } from "discourse/lib/computed";
 import CategoryChooserComponent from "select-kit/components/category-chooser";
 import {
   pluginApiIdentifiers,
@@ -7,11 +8,13 @@ import {
 
 @classNames("search-advanced-category-chooser")
 @selectKitOptions({
- allowUncategorized: true,
+ allowUncategorized: "allowUncategorized",
   clearable: true,
   none: "category.all",
   displayCategoryDescription: false,
   permissionType: null,
 })
 @pluginApiIdentifiers("search-advanced-category-chooser")
-export default class SearchAdvancedCategoryChooser extends CategoryChooserComponent {}
+export default class SearchAdvancedCategoryChooser extends CategoryChooserComponent {
+ @setting("allow_uncategorized_topics") allowUncategorized;
+}

```

```plaintext
import { render } from "@ember/test-helpers";
import { module, test } from "qunit";
import { setupRenderingTest } from "discourse/tests/helpers/component-test";
import selectKit from "discourse/tests/helpers/select-kit-helper";
import SearchAdvancedCategoryChooser from "select-kit/components/search-advanced-category-chooser";

module(
  "Integration | Component | select-kit/search-advanced-category-chooser",
  function (hooks) {
    setupRenderingTest(hooks);

    hooks.beforeEach(function () {
      this.set("subject", selectKit());
    });

    test("respects allow_uncategorized_topics setting when false", async function (assert) {
      this.siteSettings.allow_uncategorized_topics = false;

      await render(<template><SearchAdvancedCategoryChooser /></template>);

      await this.subject.expand();

      // Uncategorized category (ID 17 in test data) should not be present when setting is false
      assert.false(
        this.subject.rowByValue(17).exists(),
        "uncategorized category is not available when allow_uncategorized_topics is false"
      );
    });

    test("shows uncategorized category when allow_uncategorized_topics is true", async function (assert) {
      this.siteSettings.allow_uncategorized_topics = true;

      await render(<template><SearchAdvancedCategoryChooser /></template>);

      await this.subject.expand();

      // Uncategorized category (ID 17 in test data) should be present when setting is true
      assert.true(
        this.subject.rowByValue(17).exists(),
        "uncategorized category is available when allow_uncategorized_topics is true"
      );
    });

    test("has correct default options", async function (assert) {
      await render(<template><SearchAdvancedCategoryChooser /></template>);

      assert.strictEqual(
        this.subject.header().label(),
        "All categories",
        "has correct default none label"
      );
    });
  }
);

```

But that is just the advanced search bug, we are playing wack-a-mole here…

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabled-uncategorized-shows-in-category-dropdowns/370541)._