How to Add WooCommerce Custom Product Tabs

✅ Reviewed by a Senior WooCommerce Specialist · Last fact-checked 18 November 2025.

Customizing WooCommerce product tabs allows you to present product information in a clean, organized, and user-friendly manner. Instead of overwhelming customers with lengthy descriptions, tabs break content into manageable sections such as specifications, FAQs, reviews, and shipping details.

This not only enhances the shopping experience but also helps highlight key selling points and boost conversions.

In this guide, we will walk you through:

1. How to add WooCommerce Custom Product Tabs without plugin.
2. Which is the best WooCommerce Custom Product Tabs plugin for a comprehensive solution.

Why Custom Product Tabs Are Essential for WooCommerce User Experience & SEO

Effective product tab customization is essential for several reasons:

• Reduce Support Tickets and Returns: Clear, accessible product information lowers customer queries and misunderstandings, improving satisfaction and reducing returns.
• Improved User Experience: Customers can quickly find specific details without endless scrolling, making their buying journey smoother and more enjoyable.
• Cleaner Product Pages: Tabs organize diverse product data without cluttering the main description area, helping maintain a professional-looking store.
• Highlight Unique Selling Points: Separate tabs let you emphasize warranties, care instructions, or special features that differentiate your products.
• SEO Benefits: Structured tab content can be indexed by search engines, increasing your chances of ranking higher for targeted keywords.
• Versatility Across Products: Global or category-specific tabs save time by automating repeated information like shipping policies or sizing charts across multiple products.

How to Add, Edit, & Remove WooCommerce Product Tabs without a Plugin (PHP Code)

WooCommerce offers a significant number of Product Page hooks and filters to help you customize the product page. You can use these hooks and filters to create custom product tabs in WooCommerce.

Always use a child theme or a custom snippets plugin to apply code changes. This prevents losing your customizations when the parent theme updates, ensuring your WooCommerce product tab changes remain intact.

1. PHP Snippet: How to Add a New Custom Product Tab in WooCommerce

WooCommerce provides a filter hook called woocommerce_product_tabs to customize product tabs programmatically. This filter passes an array of existing tabs, which you can extend or modify.

Add this code to your child theme’s functions.php file to create a custom tab:

php

add_filter('woocommerce_product_tabs', 'add_custom_product_tab');

function add_custom_product_tab($tabs) {
    $tabs['custom_tab'] = array(
        'title'    => __('Custom Tab', 'your-textdomain'), // Tab title
        'priority' => 50,  // Position of the tab
        'callback' => 'custom_product_tab_content' // Function that displays tab content
    );
    return $tabs;
}

function custom_product_tab_content() {
    echo '<h2>Able Rabbit Custom Tab</h2>';
    echo '<p>This is the content inside the custom tab.</p>';
}

• title: The tab’s label shown on the product page.
• priority: Controls the order; lower numbers appear first.
• callback: The function that outputs content inside the tab.

2. PHP Snippet: How to Rename Default Product Tabs (Description, Reviews, etc.)

You can target and rename any existing default tabs by modifying their title property in the $tabs array. Example:

php

add_filter('woocommerce_product_tabs', 'rename_default_tabs', 98);

function rename_default_tabs($tabs) {
    if (isset($tabs['additional_information'])) {
        $tabs['additional_information']['title'] = __('Tech Specs', 'your-textdomain');
    }

    if (isset($tabs['description'])) {
        $tabs['description']['title'] = __('Product Details', 'your-textdomain');
    }

    if (isset($tabs['reviews'])) {
        $tabs['reviews']['title'] = __('Customer Reviews', 'your-textdomain');
    }
    return $tabs;
}

3. PHP Snippet: How to Reorder WooCommerce Product Tabs using Priority

The ‘priority’ key controls the tab order; lower priorities are shown earlier. For example, to move “Reviews” to the first position you can use the following snippet:

php

add_filter('woocommerce_product_tabs', 'reorder_tabs_priority', 99);

function reorder_tabs_priority($tabs) {
    if (isset($tabs['reviews'])) {
        $tabs['reviews']['priority'] = 5; // Low number means display first
    }
    return $tabs;
}

4. PHP Snippet: How to Completely Remove Default Tabs from the Product Page

You can completely remove default tabs using PHP’s unset() function on the desired tab keys:

php

add_filter('woocommerce_product_tabs', 'remove_default_tabs', 100);

function remove_default_tabs($tabs) {
    unset($tabs['description']);             // Remove Description tab
    unset($tabs['reviews']);                 // Remove Reviews tab
    unset($tabs['additional_information']); // Remove Additional Information tab
    return $tabs;
}

5. PHP Snippet: Display Tabs Conditionally by Product Category or Tag

If you want to display a custom tab on products that belong to a specific category (e.g., ‘size-guide’ tab only appears for ‘t-shirts’), you can use a snippet like the following.

PHP
/**
 * Add a custom 'Size Guide' tab only to products in the 't-shirts' category.
 */
add_filter( 'woocommerce_product_tabs', 'add_size_guide_tab_by_category' );
function add_size_guide_tab_by_category( $tabs ) {
    // Check if the current product belongs to the 't-shirts' product category
    if ( has_term( 't-shirts', 'product_cat' ) ) {
        $tabs['size_guide'] = array(
            'title'    => __( 'Size Guide', 'woocommerce' ),
            'priority' => 25, // Appears between Additional Info (20) and Reviews (30)
            'callback' => 'size_guide_tab_content'
        );
    }
    return $tabs;
}

// Custom Tab Content
function size_guide_tab_content() {
    echo '<h2>T-Shirt Sizing Chart</h2>';
    echo '<p>Find your perfect fit with our detailed sizing guide...</p>';
    // You could also echo an HTML table here
}

6. PHP Snippet: Dynamic Tab Content from Custom Fields (Product-Specific Data)

If you want to display a custom product specific data (e.g. product warranty), you can do so by pulling unique content for the tab from a Custom Field added to the individual product page.

PHP
/**
 * Add a 'Warranty Info' tab that pulls content from a Custom Field (meta).
 */
add_filter( 'woocommerce_product_tabs', 'add_dynamic_warranty_tab' );
function add_dynamic_warranty_tab( $tabs ) {
    global $product;
    $warranty_text = get_post_meta( $product->get_id(), '_warranty_details', true );

    // ONLY show the tab if the custom field is NOT empty
    if ( ! empty( $warranty_text ) ) {
        $tabs['warranty_details'] = array(
            'title'    => __( 'Warranty & Support', 'woocommerce' ),
            'priority' => 45, // Position it last
            'callback' => 'dynamic_warranty_tab_content'
        );
    }
    return $tabs;
}

// Custom Tab Content Function - displays the custom field data
function dynamic_warranty_tab_content() {
    global $product;
    $warranty_text = get_post_meta( $product->get_id(), '_warranty_details', true );
    
    echo '<h2>Product-Specific Warranty Details</h2>';
    echo apply_filters( 'the_content', $warranty_text ); // Filter allows HTML/shortcodes
}

This approaches of using WooCommerce Hooks and Filters provides full control over WooCommerce product tabs without relying on plugins, suitable for developers who want lightweight, performant, and maintainable customizations.

Remember always to back up your site and test code changes on staging before applying to production to prevent any disruptions.

However, customizing the wooCommerce Product tabs without plugins need a deep understanding of WooCommerce hooks and filters and may not be the right fit for all storeowners. Professionally developed WooCommerce plugins can be a better option in these cases.

Top 4 Best WooCommerce Custom Product Tabs Plugins (Features & Comparison)

Below is a comparison of the top-rated WooCommerce Custom Product Tabs plugins, categorized by their key features and value propositions.

Choosing the Best Custom Product Tab Plugin: Expert Recommendations

To make a final decision, consider your primary need:

• If management simplicity and drag-and-drop are your priority (and you use other Barn2 tools): Barn2’s plugin is the most intuitive manager.
• If design, switching to an accordion, or advanced visual layouts are crucial: Smart Tabs is the better choice for front-end aesthetics.
• If you sell B2B or have special customers and need to hide policy tabs from the public: Addify offers the most robust user-role conditional logic.

Note: We did not list the popular and Free Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce plugin by (YIKES, Inc.) because it has not been updated for long in the WordPress repository. The website is also not reflecting details for the pro plugin.

Conclusion: Code vs. Plugin—Which Tab Solution is Right for You?

Customizing WooCommerce product tabs is a powerful way to enhance your product pages, increase customer engagement, and improve overall user experience.

Whether you prefer lightweight, code-based customizations or more feature-rich, user-friendly plugins, you can tailor your product information presentation to fit your brand and business needs.

Developers and performance enthusiasts may opt for code customizations within a child theme for fine control without added bloat, while store owners who want rich multimedia tabs and ease of use may benefit from specialized WooCommerce tab plugins that offer drag-and-drop interfaces, multimedia support, and conditional display options.

Selecting the right method or tool depends on your technical comfort, customization complexity, and store goals.

WooCommerce Custom Product Tabs FAQs (Code & Plugin)

Can I add custom product tabs in WooCommerce without using a plugin?

Yes, you can add, rename, reorder, or remove product tabs using simple PHP code snippets in your child theme’s functions.php file by leveraging WooCommerce’s woocommerce_product_tabs filter. This is ideal for developers or those comfortable editing code.

Will my custom WooCommerce code be lost after theme updates?

If you add customizations to the parent theme’s files, yes. To avoid losing changes, always implement code in a child theme or use a custom snippets plugin designed to preserve your modifications during theme or WooCommerce updates.

Which WooCommerce Custom Product Tabs plugin is best for adding multimedia content in tabs?

Plugins like Barn2 WooCommerce Product Tabs and YITH WooCommerce Tab Manager support rich multimedia content such as images, videos, and galleries, enabling engaging product tab content without code.

Can I control tab WooCommerce custom product tab visibility based on product or user?

Many premium tab plugins offer conditional display rules allowing you to show or hide tabs based on categories, tags, or user roles. For customizing via code, additional conditional logic will need to be implemented.

How do I reorder the default WooCommerce tabs on the Product page?

You change the tab order using the ‘priority’ parameter in the tab array. Lower priority numbers display earlier. This can be done via a code snippet or some plugins provide drag-and-drop interfaces for tab reordering.

Are custom WooCommerce product tabs SEO friendly?

Yes, custom tabs are part of the product page content and are indexed by search engines. Plugins that generate clean HTML and allow content customization can help maximize SEO benefits.

PRO Tip: Also check our other WooCommerce Product Page customization articles.