Enabling Brands: Update for WooCommerce 9.6

In October 2024, we announced the introduction of the Brands plugin migrating into WooCommerce Core as a beta feature that required manual enabling. Since then, we’ve listened to your feedback, and refined the feature. We are now excited to share that starting with WooCommerce 9.6, scheduled for Monday, January 20th, Brands will move out of beta and be automatically enabled for everyone.

This update simplifies your experience and ensures that brand management becomes a seamless part of WooCommerce stores. Here’s what you need to know:

Enabling and disabling Brands

As of WooCommerce 9.6:

• Automatically enabled: Brands is now fully integrated into WooCommerce core and turned on by default for all users.
• Disabling Brands: If you prefer not to use this feature, you can disable it with the following code snippet:

add_action( 'init', function() {
    update_option( 'wc_feature_woocommerce_brands_enabled', 'no' );
} );

Alternatively, you can disable it via WP CLI:

wp option update wc_feature_woocommerce_brands_enabled 'no'

For existing plugin users

If you previously used the WooCommerce Brands plugin, the following changes apply:

• The plugin will be automatically disabled upon updating to WooCommerce 9.6.
• Users will see a prompt to delete the plugin, as its functionality is now included in WooCommerce core. Removing the plugin is recommended, as it won’t receive any further updates and won’t be possible to activate it with WooCommerce 9.6+.

Documentation

You can learn more about Brands and how to implement in a store here.

Additional notes for developers

• The feature flag wc_feature_woocommerce_brands_enabled can be safely removed from your code if you were manually enabling Brands during the beta period.
• The woocommerce_remote_variant_assignment option, previously part of the beta configuration, is no longer necessary in WooCommerce 9.6+.

What’s next for Brands?

The transition of Brands to WooCommerce core ensures it will continue to evolve alongside the platform. We’re working to integrate and improve its documentation and user experience. In the meantime, your feedback in our GitHub Discussion for this topic, as we look forward to learning about your experience with this feature.

We’re thrilled to see how you use Brands to enhance your stores and look forward to seeing your creativity in action!