Force auto update for a plugin using php

In this post we will see how we can force auto update for a plugin using php. Auto updates in wordpress is a wonderful feature. This feature frees us from constantly checking for updates. It updates our themes and plugins automatically thus reduces the mundane tasks in life.

Enabling auto updates is as simple as clicking on the required option in plugins screen though, sometimes we may need to do this using php script.

Force auto updates for all the plugins

We can use following snippet as mentioned in wordpress documentation

// Automatic updates for All plugins
add_filter( 'auto_update_plugin', '__return_true' );

//Automatic updates for All themes:
add_filter( 'auto_update_theme', '__return_true' );

Force auto updates for a particular plugin

add_filter( 'auto_update_plugin', 'aoc_force_auto_update', 10, 2 );
function aoc_force_auto_update( $update, $item ) {
	if ( $item->id === '<plugin-slug>' ) {
		// always enable auto update
	    return true;
	}
// return original value for other plugins
	return $update;
}