Redirect to Referring URL after Login

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Your code is completely flawed – not to mention you can’t redirect to the HTTP referer after login… because the referer is now the login page. Instead, use the login_redirect filter:

add_filter( 'login_redirect', function ( $redirect_to, $requested_redirect_to ) {
    if ( ! $requested_redirect_to ) {
        $redirect_to = wp_get_referer();
    }

    return $redirect_to;
}, 10, 2 );

Note that we only override $redirect_to if $requested_redirect_to is “empty”, otherwise:

  1. It will break the redirect_to URL parameter that both WordPress and many plugins use to set specific post-login redirects other than the default (too many times have I seen plugins completely break this feature).

  2. If we always set it to the referer, we’ll end up with the login page itself (as mentioned earlier). This is because when a user first lands on the login page, WordPress sets a hidden redirect_to field with the value of $redirect_to. On subsequent page load (i.e. logging in), this becomes the $requested_redirect_to value.