How to Clean UP Your WordPress Media Library? Are you searching for a way to clean up your media library? WordPress make many copies of a single media file that you upload and over time that leads to tons of files in storage. These files are even not used anywhere on site.
Cleaning up media library saves a lot of disk space on your hosting server & reduces backup size. Both of these are helpful resource to save your cost. So today we bring you the easiest methods of cleaning up your WordPress media library.
Why Clean up WordPress Media Library?
Each image that you upload on your WordPress media library, WordPress will make its copies. Themes and plugins also requests additional image sizes.
Apart from these images, also you may end up uploading several images that are not used anywhere on website.
These media files increase your disc space on hosting server as well as backup size. This results in longer time consumption in transfer, backup and restores your site.
If you own a WordPress site for some time, then you take advantage of cleaning up WP media library.
- Clean Up Media Library Using Media Cleaner:- In this method, You need a media cleaner plugin. It is available in WordPress directory as a free plugin with pro version available with some more features.
Initially Install & activate the WordPress Media Cleaner plugin. After activation, Go to Media>> Cleaner page to analyze media library. Plugin may prompt you to reset it. During the process it will create new table in your database to store data.
After that, click on Start Scan button to run the media library analysis. Now, the cleaner look for files in media library and inside your WordPress posts/pages. It will try to find out the files that are in media library but not used anywhere on website. This will take a while based on media size and content you have.
After process completion, You’ll see a list of results. It will display all the media files that are currently unuseful. You can choose the file that you don’t want to have and delete them. Also you can tap on delete all for deleting all the unused media files.
- Clean Up WordPress Media Library Using Media Dedupper:- In this method, We will use Media Dedupper plugin. Also it is available as both free and paid version.
We recommend using pro version because it enables you to prevent deleting duplicate images in WooCommerce, or WordPress gallery.
Install & activate Media Dedupper plugin. After activation, Visit Media >> Manage Duplicates page and tap on index media button to analyze media library.
Plugin will start analyzing media library and list all duplicate images. Then you can see if duplicate image is used on your site.
After reviewing the media files, select all files or specific duplicates. Then simply choose “Smart Delete” from bulk actions drop down menu & click on apply.
Smart Delete feature will ensure that images that are being used on website are not deleted. Also it merges duplicate images allowing you to reuse media files without uploading same file again.