The Problem: If you’re running a WooCommerce store with dozens or hundreds of product categories, you know the struggle. Scrolling through endless category lists in your WordPress dashboard is tedious. Your customers face the same frustration on the frontend—clicking through nested categories trying to find what they need. It’s a time-waster that hurts both your workflow and customer experience.
The Solution: The WooCommerce Category Search Enhancer plugin adds instant live search functionality to your category management and creates a sleek WooCommerce category accordion widget for your storefront. No more endless scrolling or clicking—just type and find.
Video: WooCommerce Live Categoru Search Plugin Overview
WooCommerce Live Category Search Plugin Features
The plugin tackles category overload in two ways:
Backend: Adds a search box directly in your WordPress post editor’s category meta box. When you’re assigning categories to products, just type to filter and find the right category instantly.
Frontend: Creates a searchable, collapsible category widget your customers can use. They type what they’re looking for, and matching categories appear immediately. It’s like having a smart navigation assistant built into your store.
Installing and Configuring the Plugin
Installation is straightforward:
- Upload the plugin to your WordPress site
- Activate it from the Plugins menu
- Head to WooCommerce > Settings > Products
- Scroll down to the Category Search section
Here’s where you customize everything:
- Search Placeholder: Change the text that appears in the search box
- Hide Uncategorized: Remove the default “Uncategorized” category from display
- Make Categories Collapsible: Enable the WooCommerce category accordion widget feature so parent categories can expand and collapse
- Sort Categories By: Choose alphabetical order or sort by product count
- Hide Empty Categories: Clean up your list by hiding categories with no products
- Hide Product Count: Remove the numbers showing how many products are in each category
WooCommerce Live Category Search Plugin Download
Adding the Search Widget to Your Site
The magic happens with a simple shortcode. Just add [woocommerce_category_search] anywhere you want the widget to appear—pages, posts, or widget areas.
Want to customize it? Try these options:
[woocommerce_category_search title="Browse Our Products"]– Custom title[woocommerce_category_search show_title="false"]– Hide the title completely[woocommerce_category_search placeholder="Find what you need..."]– Custom search text
The widget automatically highlights the current category when customers are browsing, making navigation intuitive and keeping them oriented in your store structure.
Bottom line: This plugin turns category chaos into organized, searchable navigation—both for you and your customers. Install it once, configure your preferences, add the shortcode, and you’re done.
