Title: Making Nav Menus &#8216;filterable&#8221;?
Last modified: February 9, 2021

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# Making Nav Menus ‘filterable”?

 *  [clsimco](https://wordpress.org/support/users/clsimco/)
 * (@clsimco)
 * [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/making-nav-menus-filterable/)
 * Hi and thank you for your time and patience.
 * DESCRIPTION:
    I want to add icons to a nav menu (primary). I have learned that
   the menu must be “filterable”. I am learning /teaching myself to create themes.
   Working on localhost.
 * I have two themes that I am working with. One I created and is working pretty
   well. The other is “wp_bootstrap_4” which seems to no longer be supported by 
   it’s author and WP, although it works pretty well out of the box as is. Both 
   of these themes use the “new bootstrap navwalker”. Neither is able to display
   icons in the menus (as is a native bootstrap 4 capability) when used as is in
   a WP Theme.
 * Although I prefer to code, rather than use plugins for everything, I found that
   the theme that I built is able to show the icons in the menus with the help of
   a plugin called “Menu Icons by ThemeIsle”. The wp bootstrap 4 theme still does
   not show menu icons with that plugin. ThemeIsle notes tell me a menu must be “
   filterable”. I’ve done a bit of searching however have found no clear answers
   or process to make a menu “filterable”.
 * QUESTION:
 * What makes a menu filterable to enable the ability to add icons or even perhaps
   other items or functionality in a menu? How to do it simply so that a plugin 
   could be used, AND how to do it (write the code or use existing snippets) without
   the use of a plugin? I’m not making heads or tails of the references in the Codex.
 * Thanks again!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  [Joy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/joyously/)
 * (@joyously)
 * [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/making-nav-menus-filterable/#post-14028049)
 * It’s best to use the core menu walker.
    [https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/walker_nav_menu/](https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/walker_nav_menu/)
   Read the code and everywhere that it calls `apply_filters()` is where other code
   can influence the output (change the filter function’s first parameter).
 *  Thread Starter [clsimco](https://wordpress.org/support/users/clsimco/)
 * (@clsimco)
 * [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/making-nav-menus-filterable/#post-14028222)
 * Thanks [@joyously](https://wordpress.org/support/users/joyously/)
    I’ll dig in
   to that and see if I can make sense of it.
 * I appreciate your taking the time!
 * Best to you

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘Making Nav Menus ‘filterable”?’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [filter](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/filter/)
 * [nav menu](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/nav-menu/)

 * In: [Developing with WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/wp-advanced/)
 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [clsimco](https://wordpress.org/support/users/clsimco/)
 * Last activity: [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/making-nav-menus-filterable/#post-14028222)
 * Status: not resolved

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