How To Find And Delete Unused Images In WordPress in 2020
Introduction
Admit it, you’ve probably asked yourself this question too. But how do I find and delete unused images in WordPress? Is there a quick way to understand which images are not used in any web page, and which therefore can be removed from WordPress? Over the months or even years, a WordPress site accumulates a lot of media files due to the creation of new content. Let me show you How To Find And Delete Unused Images In WordPress in 2020.
Some of these media files ( images, audio, video, etc … ), for one reason or another, may have been removed from the page where they were initially uploaded, but continue to remain uploaded to our WordPress site without any utility. That’s why in this article we are going to see how to find and delete unused images on WordPress ( or media files in general ) to optimize the space on our hosting and keep the multimedia contents of our website in order.
Why you should clean up your WordPress media library
When you upload an image to your media library, WordPress makes several copies of it. The different themes and plugins may also require a variety of image sizes. As a result, your media library can accumulate many files that you may not be aware of.
Ultimately, this can run aground on your entire website, as all those images take up space on your web server. Another problem that can come with a media library full of stuff is a large website backup. If an automatic backup job is configured, the backup files can become large and consequently take up a lot of space.
Depending on your web hosting plan, all of those extra files could come at an additional cost each month, as well as creating an overall slowdown. However, it’s important to make at least one copy of your current website before tackling a media library review. This is because most cleaning processes involve deleting files forever.
How to delete unused images
The first method, the simplest and fastest, is to use the tools that WordPress itself makes available to us, namely the ” Media ” section.
So, we log into our WordPress site and go to “ Media-> Library “.
Through the drop-down menu we choose ” Not attached ” and, automatically, we will be shown all the media files within our WordPress site which, currently, are not shown in any article or page.
Find unused images in WordPress
Subsequently, through the button ” Multiple selections “, we can select and eventually delete all the files and images that we consider useless.
Warning! This list of ” unattached ” files also includes images used as logos, favicons, or elements used within specific themes or plugins.
So be careful before deciding whether to permanently delete some images, make sure they are unused.
Remove unused images via plugins
Media Cleaner
Media Cleaner is a simple plugin that makes it easy to remove unused media files in WordPress. Once installed, this tool will add any unused files on your website (such as posts, pages, or galleries) to a temporary recycle bin. You can then examine the files to make sure you want to delete them and permanently remove them.
WP-Optimize
WP-Optimize offers many features related to cleaning and optimizing your website files. In particular, you can set the plugin to automatically remove “orphaned” images or images set to certain sizes. Also, you can set up an optimization schedule suitable for your website.
WPS Cleaner
WP Cleaner is a multifunctional website cleaning plugin with media-specific functionality. You will be able to review the total weight of your media files. Plus, the intuitive dashboard can help you identify unused media files and delete them in bulk or individually. WP Cleaner will also identify and include media added via the best page builders.
A good alternative is to use a plugin that can scan all media files on our website and tell us if and where they are used.
The plugin in question is called Media Cleaner and allows you to do all this by keeping the media library of our WordPress site in order.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, just go to “ Media-> Cleaner ” to enter the settings panel. From here we can start the scan which will be able to find all those media files that are not.
Find and delete unused images with Media Cleaner
Next to each element found, it will be possible to view the name, the type, the reason why it is reported ( usually because it is not used ), and its weight.
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By selecting the elements it will be possible to delete them with a click or ignore them if we are sure that a certain element is used even if the plugin tells us otherwise.
As stated by the plugin, we at WP Special too would like to remind you that, before carrying out any type of cleaning of multimedia files, it is advisable to make a preventive backup.
Since, if a file is deleted, it will no longer be possible to recover it.
Conclusions
In this short article, we have seen how to easily find and delete unused images on WordPress, in general, all multimedia files that, over time, have become “orphans”.
Carrying out this type of checks periodically is very important because it allows us to keep the available web space under control, but above all to avoid leaving unused files on our website.
And you? Have you ever done this kind of check on your website? Tell us yours using the comments form below 🙂