WordPress comes with some quirks,as its a free, open-source platform. While WordPress as a software has come a long way since becoming one of the pioneers, its economy is no different from mobile OS. Plugins and themes almost always fall in to 4 categories: free, freemium, paid, or subscription. And unfortunately some of these paid theme ‘updates’ can be very brazen when asking for more money.

I believe the actual discussion merits an independent post, so I’ll limit the topic to what this method is aimed for. WordPress paid themes, unlike from its subscription-based counterparts, do not ask for secondary payment; that would defy its definition. However, as a design kit with codes attached, any bug fixes should be provided as part of the package, not an add-on. It makes no sense to pay a full price again just to see the version number changes, fighting phantom glitches. This is where my method kicks in — themes that are asking for updates when there is no real good guaranteed from it.

There are two solutions, one to disable notifications of all theme related updates. If you are working on multiple themes simultaneously, this could be one you are looking for. Insert it under the functions.php of the activated theme’s parent theme in question:

/**
 * Disable theme update notification
 */
function disable_theme_update_notification( $value ) {
    return null;
}
add_filter( 'site_transient_update_themes', 'disable_theme_update_notification' );

Two, disable one specific theme’s update notifications. Replace the bracketed part with the name of your theme (note: there are TWO instances), and simply insert it under the functions.php of the activated theme’s parent theme:

/**
 * Disable [this theme] update notification
 */

function disable_theme_update_notification( $value ) {
    if ( isset( $value ) && is_object( $value ) ) {
        unset( $value->response['this theme'] );
    }
    return $value;
}
add_filter( 'site_transient_update_themes', 'disable_theme_update_notification' );

This will stop a theme in question from producing update notifications. The use case can vary from holding out an update on free theme packages, —many bloggers choose to work with WordPress default theme suites— and like what I did, hold out an paid theme update. Ultimately, of course, it is advisable not to hold out on updates. Hopefully these developers would understand the frustration at some point.

updated Aug 10, 2018: added a new script to target specific theme.