Minimalistic Cookie Notice for WordPress (under 2KB, no plugin)

A 2 KB cookie notice for WordPress — no plugin, no cookie wall, no scripts in the critical path. Drops a dismissible banner in the footer and remembers the choice for one year. That is the whole thing.

Most cookie-notice plugins weigh 40-80 KB of JS, inject a render-blocking stylesheet, and add 3-5 additional HTTP requests before the visitor can read your homepage. For a site that runs no third-party tracking (or only first-party analytics that do not require consent under most jurisdictions), that overhead is absurd. This snippet is what I run on gauravtiwari.org itself — HTML, tiny CSS, ~15 lines of vanilla JS. Dismisses, remembers, ships.

What this snippet does

• Renders a dismissible cookie banner in the footer with a single “Got it” button
• Stores the consent as a 1-year first-party cookie (gt_cookie_notice=1) so the banner never reappears after dismissal
• Ships inline CSS under 600 bytes and inline JS under 400 bytes — zero external requests
• Injects after DOMContentLoaded so it never blocks First Contentful Paint
• Respects prefers-reduced-motion for the fade-in animation
• GDPR-note-compliant for sites that use no tracking or only essential/first-party cookies

Install and use

Drop the code into your child theme functions.php or a site-specific mu-plugin at wp-content/mu-plugins/cookie-notice.php. No settings page, no options — edit the message text directly in the function. If you actually run third-party tracking, replace this with a proper Consent Management Platform (Iubenda, CookieYes), not this snippet.

<?php
/**
 * Minimalist cookie notice for WordPress.
 * Place in child theme functions.php or mu-plugins/cookie-notice.php.
 */
add_action( 'wp_footer', function () {
    if ( isset( $_COOKIE['gt_cookie_notice'] ) ) return;
    ?>
    <style>
    .gt-cookie-notice{position:fixed;inset:auto 1rem 1rem 1rem;max-width:30rem;margin-inline:auto;padding:.9rem 1.1rem;background:#111;color:#fff;border-radius:.6rem;box-shadow:0 10px 30px rgba(0,0,0,.25);font-size:.9rem;line-height:1.45;display:flex;gap:1rem;align-items:center;justify-content:space-between;z-index:9999;opacity:0;transform:translateY(6px);transition:opacity .25s,transform .25s}
    .gt-cookie-notice.is-visible{opacity:1;transform:translateY(0)}
    .gt-cookie-notice button{background:#fff;color:#111;border:0;border-radius:.4rem;padding:.4rem .8rem;font-weight:600;cursor:pointer}
    @media(prefers-reduced-motion:reduce){.gt-cookie-notice{transition:none}}
    </style>
    <div class="gt-cookie-notice" role="region" aria-label="Cookie notice">
      <span>This site uses first-party cookies to remember your preferences. <a href="/privacy/" style="color:#93c5fd">Privacy policy</a>.</span>
      <button type="button" id="gt-cookie-accept">Got it</button>
    </div>
    <script>
    document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
      var n = document.querySelector('.gt-cookie-notice');
      if ( ! n ) return;
      requestAnimationFrame( function () { n.classList.add('is-visible'); } );
      document.getElementById('gt-cookie-accept').addEventListener('click', function () {
        document.cookie = 'gt_cookie_notice=1;path=/;max-age=' + ( 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 ) + ';SameSite=Lax';
        n.remove();
      });
    });
    </script>
    <?php
} );

How it works

The PHP handler bails immediately if the gt_cookie_notice cookie is already set — no output, no wasted bytes. Otherwise it prints a scoped <style>, the banner markup, and a tiny inline script on wp_footer, ensuring HTML, CSS, and JS all sit in the same document so no render-blocking request fires. The script waits for DOMContentLoaded, adds an is-visible class on the next animation frame (for the fade-in), and on click writes a SameSite=Lax cookie with a 1-year max-age then removes the banner from the DOM.

Download and source

• Gist: gist.github.com/wpgaurav (search “cookie-notice.php”)
• Repo home for the full Simple Cookie Notice plugin: wpgaurav/simple-cookie-notice (if you want a real settings page)
• If you need full GDPR/CCPA with category toggles, use Iubenda — this snippet is NOT a consent management platform

FAQs

Related snippets

• Remove spam links from WordPress comments — the privacy-compliance pair
• Simple Cookie Notice plugin on GitHub (if you want an admin UI)
• All PHP snippets