Can't remove canonical link in WordPress with Yoast SEO Plugin

Question

So I'm trying to remove the canonical link in the header of WordPress for paginated pages but all the suggestions I tried aren't working.

Here is my code which is in my functions.php file:

function my_add_noindex_tags(){
    $paged = intval( get_query_var( 'paged' ) );

    if(is_search() || is_404() ) :
        echo '<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">';
    endif;

    if ($paged >= 2) :
        add_filter( 'wpseo_canonical', '__return_false', 10, 1 );

        remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');

        echo '<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">';
    endif;
}
add_action('wp_head','my_add_noindex_tags', 4 );

I know the code inside if ($paged >= 2) : runs because this tag <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> is in the head section.

Anyone know where I might be going wrong.

The issue here is the canonical link added by Yoast SEO aren't properly removed as expected.

Cheers

Answer 1

After going through the Yoast SEO codes, it seems like the canonical action is added to wpseo_head action.

You either have to use priority 1 when adding your function to run in wp_head to get this to execute properly, or do it with the appropriate method below ie. using wpseo_head action.

function remove_canonical() {
    $paged = intval( get_query_var( 'paged' ) );

    if ($paged >= 2) {
        add_filter( 'wpseo_canonical', '__return_false', 10 );
    }
}
add_action( 'wpseo_head', 'remove_canonical', 4);