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Troubleshooting Common YITH WooCommerce Wishlist Button Issues

28 threads Sep 16, 2025 Plugin → Yith woocommerce wishlist

Content

Many WooCommerce store owners use the YITH WooCommerce Wishlist plugin to enhance their customer experience. However, a frequent point of confusion arises when the 'Add to wishlist' button behaves unexpectedly—it might disappear, show incorrect styling, or not function at all. This guide will walk you through the most common causes and their solutions, based on community reports and resolutions.

Why Do These Button Issues Happen?

Most button-related problems are not due to a fundamental flaw in the plugin but are instead caused by conflicts. These conflicts can occur with your WordPress theme, other plugins, or specific WooCommerce product types. The plugin's JavaScript and CSS files need to load correctly and interact seamlessly with your site's other code, which isn't always the case.

Common Problems and Their Solutions

1. Button Disappears or Fails to Appear

Symptoms: The wishlist button is missing from product loops, single product pages, or only appears after a page reload.

Common Causes & Fixes:

  • AJAX Loading Conflicts: If you have many products or use AJAX-heavy plugins (e.g., live search, filters), the AJAX call to load the wishlist buttons might fail. Solution: Try disabling the 'AJAX loading' option in the wishlist settings (YITH > Wishlist > Add to Wishlist Options).
  • Theme Overrides: Your theme might be using outdated or customized template files for the wishlist button. Solution: Search your theme's folder for the files add-to-wishlist.php or add-to-wishlist-button.php. Temporarily renaming them to .bak (e.g., add-to-wishlist.php.bak) can force the plugin to use its default, working templates.
  • Missing Assets: The plugin's CSS or JavaScript files might not be loading. Solution: Add the following code to your active (child) theme's functions.php file to ensure they load properly: 
    if ( defined( 'YITH_WCWL' ) ) {
    if( ! function_exists( 'yith_wcwl_enqueue_back_required_assets' ) ) {
        function yith_wcwl_enqueue_back_required_assets() {
            $suffix  = defined( 'SCRIPT_DEBUG' ) && SCRIPT_DEBUG ? '' : '.min';
            $version = defined( 'WC_VERSION' ) ? WC_VERSION : '';
            wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery-yith-wcwl', YITH_WCWL_URL . 'assets/js/jquery.yith-wcwl' . $suffix . '.js', array( 'jquery' ), $version, true );
            wp_enqueue_style( 'yith-wcwl-main', YITH_WCWL_URL . 'assets/css/style.css' );
        }
        add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'yith_wcwl_enqueue_back_required_assets', 99 );
    }
}

2. Incorrect Button Position or Styling

Symptoms: The button appears in the wrong location (e.g., above an image instead of near the 'Add to cart' button) or has broken, unstyled formatting.

Common Causes & Fixes:

  • Theme-Specific Positioning: Some themes, like Flatsome, have highly customized product templates that don't naturally support the plugin's position settings. Solution: Use the 'Use shortcode' position option and manually place the [yith_wcwl_add_to_wishlist] shortcode in your theme's template files using a hook. For Flatsome, this code can help: 
    add_action(
    'flatsome_product_box_after',
    function() {
        if ( ! function_exists( 'YITH_WCWL_Frontend' ) ) {
            return;
        }
        YITH_WCWL_Frontend()->print_button();
    }
);
  • CSS Conflicts: Your theme's CSS may be overriding the plugin's styles. Solution: Use your browser's inspector tool to identify the CSS rules affecting the button and add more specific, overriding rules to your theme's custom CSS section.

3. Button Not Working for Variable or External Products

Symptoms: Clicking the button does nothing for variable products, or the 'Add to cart'/'Buy product' button is missing for external/affiliate products on the wishlist page.

Common Causes & Fixes:

  • Variable Products: The plugin is designed to add a specific variation to the wishlist, not the parent variable product. If no variation is selected, the button may not function. Solution: Ensure customers select a variation (e.g., size, color) before clicking the wishlist button.
  • External/Affiliate Products: By design, the plugin does not show an 'Add to cart' button for external products on the wishlist page because they are not purchasable on your site. Solution: This is a known limitation. The YITH WooCommerce Wishlist team has noted this feedback for potential future development, but a custom-coded solution would currently be required to display the external product URL button.

General Troubleshooting Steps

If you encounter an issue not listed above, always start with these steps:

  1. Conflict Test: Temporarily switch to a default WordPress theme (like Twenty Twenty-Two) and disable all plugins except WooCommerce and YITH Wishlist. If the problem resolves, reactivate your theme and plugins one by one to identify the conflict.
  2. Clear Caches: Clear any caching on your site, including server-level cache, plugin cache, and your browser cache.
  3. Check for Updates: Ensure your WordPress, WooCommerce, YITH Wishlist plugin, and theme are all updated to their latest versions.

Most button issues can be resolved by identifying a conflict with another theme or plugin and applying a targeted fix. The solutions provided here, particularly the code snippets for enqueueing assets and theme compatibility, are the most common resolutions shared by the support community.

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