Just revisiting this since I’ve been using the discourse-categories-suppressed plugin for a while now. It actually suppresses from Latest, New, and Unread — not just Latest — which makes it really useful for categories that should remain visible but not contribute to any “active” views. It’s probably more widely none that it groups the category below a “Muted categories” dropdown. Also, i have tested what i said on the linked topics about mentions’ coming through on suppressed/but muted categories.
It’s one of the only ways to truly suppress a category without relying on user mutes or hiding the category entirely. Would love to see this get:
a checkbox in category settings
a proper plugin topic on Meta
or even some lightweight documentation.
Right now it’s a bit hidden and underpowered given how useful it can be. Any chance of a write-up or some UI love for it?
Just following up on this in light of the recent post in Group owners should not necessarily be group members — both discussions reflect a growing need for more granular visibility controls that aren’t easily handled by muting, membership, or nesting alone.
The discourse-categories-suppressed plugin is already a huge help when you want to remove a category from Latest, New, and Unread without hiding it entirely from users. Some key use cases:
Staff inboxes (not secret, but shouldn’t distract from active discussions)
Opt-in communities that shouldn’t dominate the front page
Archives that should be visible but not promoted
To build on that, I’d suggest:
Adding this to the plugin directory with a proper topic + setup guide
Folding it into core UI via admin UI settings, with options like:
“Suppress from Latest/New/Unread”
“Suppress from search results” ← the plugin deosn’t already support this, but a UI checkbox would make it accessible
(Already implemented): suppressed categories appear in a “Muted Categories” dropdown at the bottom of the /categories page
These small improvements would let admins fine-tune discoverability and user experience. I’d be happy to contribute test cases or help document use patterns if this gains traction.
Adding this to the plugin directory with a proper topic + setup guide