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Black Bar

By Gemini Labs

Developer Tools & Customization / Debugging & Development Tools

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Black Bar Review - In-Depth Analysis

Black Bar is a Debug Bar for WordPress developers that provides insights into errors, SQL queries, and performance metrics.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.6/10

User Rating

5/5 (based on 9+ reviews)

Active Installations

600+

Update Frequency

Below Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

1 / 10 (Very Low Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

Black Bar is an unobtrusive Debug Bar for WordPress developers. It collects and displays errors, executed SQL queries, slow actions and hooks, theme templates, global variables, and provides a profiler.

This tool helps you debug your code with the Console, inspect global variables like COOKIE, GET, POST, SERVER, SESSION, and WP_Screen. You can measure the performance of your code with the Profiler and view any PHP errors that occur when loading a page in the Console.

Additionally, it allows you to view executed MySQL queries along with execution time and backtrace, as well as the template files of the active theme in loaded order. You can also see the 50 slowest action and filter hooks along with callbacks ordered by priority.

Comparing to Alternatives

Black Bar stands alone in its category with no close direct alternatives available, making it a unique tool for developers.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly effective for debugging and performance analysis
Beautifully coded PHP, appreciated by developers
Helps identify and resolve plugin conflicts causing slowdowns
Easy to use and understand for pinpointing issues
Consistently praised for its usefulness and reliability

Weaknesses

No pro version or advanced paid features
Limited to debugging and performance monitoring functions
Lacks direct competitors for comparison or alternative options

User Sentiment Analysis

With a perfect 5-star rating from all reviewers, user feedback is overwhelmingly positive, highlighting the plugin's effectiveness and quality.

Positive highlights

'Beautiful way to show the data' - Lenin Zapata
'Developer must have' praised for coding quality - Anna Bansaghi
'Indispensable / Essential' - informatux
'Nice and useful for debugging' - ajaxStardust
'Helped discover massive SQL query issues' - xorinzor

Common complaints

Weaknesses

No advanced features beyond core debugging
No paid version to access premium capabilities

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Developers and site administrators seeking a reliable, easy-to-use debugging tool to identify performance bottlenecks and plugin conflicts.

Not ideal for

Users looking for a plugin with premium features or extensive alternatives may find this plugin limited due to its focused scope and lack of paid upgrades.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers full debugging and performance analysis capabilities, sufficient for most developer needs.

Final Verdict

Black Bar is a standout debugging plugin with flawless user ratings and no recorded security issues, making it a trustworthy choice for developers needing to optimize WordPress performance. Its unique position without direct alternatives highlights its specialized utility.

While it lacks a pro version and advanced features, its free offering is robust and highly praised, making it ideal for users focused on effective debugging without the need for premium add-ons.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Black Bar plugin.

Debug Bar

Debugging

Performance profiling

FAQ

To add entries to the console, insert the following line of PHP anywhere in your code:

apply_filters('console', 'Enter something to debug here');

You can also add an optional log level like this:

apply_filters('console', 'Enter something to debug here', 'error');

The available log levels are: debug, info, notice, warning, error, critical, alert, and emergency.

To use the profiler, insert the following lines of PHP before and after the code you are profiling:

Before:

apply_filters('trace:start', 'Enter a description of what you are profiling here');

After:

apply_filters('trace:stop');

By default, Black Bar is only visible to administrator users. To enable it for all logged-in users, use this code snippet:

add_filter('blackbar/enabled', 'is_user_logged_in');

By default, Black Bar displays the 50 slowest action/filter hooks. To display all hooks, use this code snippet:

add_filter('blackbar/hooks/all', '__return_true');

By default, Black Bar marks queries that run longer than 50ms with a warning color, and longer than 1000ms with an error color. To change these thresholds, use these hooks:

add_filter('blackbar/queries/ms_error', fn () => 1000); // 1s add_filter('blackbar/queries/ms_warning', fn () => 50); // 50ms

Contributors and developers

“Black Bar” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Gemini Labs

Paul

Free Version

WPS

6.6

Average

Ratings

5 out of 5 | 9

Version

4.2.0

Last updated

4 months ago

Active installations

600+

WordPress version

7.0 or higher

PHP version

8.1.2 or higher

Languages

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Black Bar Review - In-Depth Analysis

Performance Overview

What It Does

Comparing to Alternatives

User Sentiment Analysis

Who Should Use This?

Pricing & Value

Final Verdict

Other Notable Features

FAQ

Contributors and developers

Ratings

Reviews (9)

Sort by:

Contributors & Developers

Interested in development?

Changelog

Security Status

Secure

No Unpatched Vulnerabilities

Known Vulnerabilities (0)

Previous Versions

WPS

6.6

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