Replace the checkboxes with radio buttons or a select drop-down in the built-in Categories metabox and Gutenberg sidebar panel.
As of April 2026, Categories Metabox Enhanced is a WordPress metabox plugin with 1.0K+ active installations and a 4.9/5 rating from 16 reviews. It has been downloaded 17K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 3.5+ and PHP false+. Available on WordPress.org since 2014. Last updated 5 years ago — may have compatibility concerns. Downloads are up 39% this week. Top alternative: Ocean Extra.
Thanks to Taxonomy_Single_Term, a library created by WebDevStudios, it made my work much easier on creating this plugin.
With Categories Metabox Enhanced, you can:
This plugin is perfect it saves me to create a CMS because of enforcing select only one category every post!
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Thanks, Author :))
Clever solution IMHO that this plugin simply replaces the default meta boxes with its own. Unfortunately in WP 5 Gutenberg the default category / taxonomy meta boxes still are visible.
This plugin is easy to use and just works 🙂
Replace checkboxes for radios! FTW
Works on WordPress 4.9.4
I’ve used this plugin on multiple sites for years. It works great and keeps editors from placing things in multiple categories.
Although I understand that not everyone uses categories the same way, it feel like WordPress should have a setting that forces categories to be one per post. In my use, tags are better suited when you have a variety of ways you want to classify a post.
It would be nice to be able to specify a default category, though.
| WordPress | 3.5+ requiredTested up to 5.6.17 |
| PHP | false+ required |
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