How to Change WordPress Admin Email Without Confirmation

Every WordPress install has an administrative email address for the site. This user receives things like new user notifications and similar. This email address can be changed under Settings > General in the WordPress admin. Recently, WordPress made a change requiring the new email address be confirmed in order to take effect. However, there is a workaround.

WordPress has a hidden Options panel accessible at /wp-admin/options.php of your WordPress install. This page has a lot of options relating to your site but the two to pay attention to here are admin_email and new_admin_email.

The admin_email field gets updated when you make the email change under Settings > General. The new_admin_email field does not get updated until the email confirmation happens. By changing both values via the options.php page, the change immediately takes effect.

I’ve also made a quick YouTube tutorial walkthrough through this process.