It’s often the small things that tend to annoy us, and in the case of one client it was the “Howdy” message on the right of the WordPress admin bar. A small thing perhaps, but how can you change it, programmatically?

Fortunately help is at hand via the following snippet which should be added to your theme or child theme’s functions.php.

// Replace Howdy Greeting
function replace_howdy_greeting( $wp_admin_bar ) {
  $my_account=$wp_admin_bar->get_node('my-account');
  $newtitle = str_replace( 'Howdy', 'Welcome', $my_account->title );
  $wp_admin_bar->add_node( array(
    'id' => 'my-account',
    'title' => $newtitle,
  ) );
}
add_filter( 'admin_bar_menu', 'replace_howdy_greeting', 12 );

Update

It’s come to my attention that the ‘Howdy’ now says, ‘Hi’. To remove this and the trailing comma, the following code should do the trick.

// Replace Hi Greeting AND Comma
function replace_hi_greeting($wp_admin_bar) {
    $my_account=$wp_admin_bar->get_node('my-account');
    $newtitle = str_replace('Hi,', '', $my_account->title );
    $wp_admin_bar->add_node(array(
        'id' => 'my-account',
        'title' => $newtitle,
        )
    );
}
add_filter('admin_bar_menu', 'replace_hi_greeting',12);