Changing the number of columns in WordPress dashboard

The latest version of WordPress sets the number of columns in its dashboard to 4. This gives ugly results with some plugins that expect more horizontal room for their content, such as the Google Analytics plugin.

Until the WordPress team decides on a solution to this problem or the plugin developers adapt to the new size, we can adjust the number of columns manually. Edit the functions.php file and add the following content:

function columns_screen_options() {
    add_screen_option(
        'layout_columns',
        array(
            'max'     => 4, //Max number of columns
            'default' => 2  //Default number of columns
        )
    );
}
add_action( 'admin_head-index.php', 'columns_screen_options' );

The result is that the number of columns can now be selected manually from the screen options. If we set it to 2, the result is much better: