How to Add a Post Featured Image Column in WordPress Admin

The posts list in the WordPress admin doesn’t show featured images, so it’s hard to spot which posts are missing one. This snippet adds a Featured Image column with a thumbnail for each post. Add it to your child theme’s functions.php or a small custom plugin.

add_filter('manage_posts_columns', 'add_img_column');
add_filter('manage_posts_custom_column', 'manage_img_column', 10, 2);

function add_img_column($columns) {
    $columns['img'] = 'Featured Image';
    return $columns;
}

function manage_img_column($column_name, $post_id) {
    if( $column_name == 'img' ) {
        echo get_the_post_thumbnail($post_id, 'thumbnail');
    }
    return $column_name;
}

How the featured image admin column works

• The manage_posts_columns filter passes in the list of columns. add_img_column() adds one with the key img and the heading Featured Image, at the end of the table.
• manage_posts_custom_column runs for each row and custom column. For the img column, manage_img_column() prints the post’s featured image at the thumbnail size. Posts without one get an empty cell.
• The second function is registered with add_filter() although the hook is an action. WordPress accepts that, and the returned value is simply ignored (see how action and filter hooks differ).

These hooks cover posts and non-hierarchical custom post types. Pages use manage_pages_columns and manage_pages_custom_column, so hook the same two functions there if you want the column on pages too.

The thumbnail size is set under Settings > Media (150 × 150 pixels by default), which makes the rows fairly tall. To show a smaller image, pass a size array such as array( 60, 60 ) instead of 'thumbnail'.

Related articles

• a sortable registration date column for users: the same column hooks on the Users screen
• applying custom CSS to the admin area: to give the new column a fixed width