remove links from images using functions.php

by 

add_filter( 'the_content', 'attachment_image_link_remove_filter' );

function attachment_image_link_remove_filter( $content ) {
    $content =
        preg_replace(
            array('{<a(.*?)(wp-att|wp-content\/uploads)[^>]*><img}',
                '{ wp-image-[0-9]*" /></a>}'),
            array('<img','" />'),
            $content
        );
    return $content;
}

The regex could be simpler and unfortunately this also deprives you of the unique wp-image-xxx (where xxx is the attachment ID) class of the <img> tag, but it’s the safest one I could come up with to only remove links around attachment images and leave in-text links as well as links around non-attachment images intact.

If you don’t care about non-attachment images and want all images within the post content to not be wrapped in links anyway, this should suffice:

function attachment_image_link_remove_filter( $content ) {
    $content =
        preg_replace(array('{<a[^>]*><img}','{/></a>}'), array('<img','/>'), $content);
    return $content;
}

I can see it breaking things though, if the inside of an anchor ends in some other self-closing element, such as a <br /> tag. That would be rare, obviously, but I’d recommend using the first, though longer version.

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