Naqeeb Ul Rehman

Media Purge gives you complete visibility into your WordPress media library, surfaces every file that is not used anywhere on your site, and lets you clean it up safely — without any risk of breaking live content.
Whether you have a small blog or a large WooCommerce store, media libraries accumulate hundreds of forgotten files over time. Media Purge makes it effortless to spot them, verify whether they are truly unused, and move them to a recoverable trash — not a permanent delete.
Free to use. All core cleanup features are available at no cost — scan, review, trash, restore, export. No scan limits, no file caps. A paid upgrade tier with advanced automation features is planned for a future release; those features are clearly marked “Coming Soon” inside the plugin.
<h3>Free Features</h3>
Smart Unused Media Scanner 
Scans post content, post meta (featured images, WooCommerce product galleries), theme customizer options, widget areas, and all major page builder data (Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Beaver Builder). Results show the exact file size so you know how much storage you will reclaim.
“Used In” Display 
Each media item shows exactly where it is used — post title, post type, and context (e.g. Featured Image in “About Us”, Elementor widget in “Home”) — with a direct link to edit that post. Never accidentally delete a file that is still in use.
Safe Trash Flow 
Files are moved to an internal trash, not permanently deleted. By default they remain recoverable for 30 days. The retention window is adjustable in Settings.
Recovery Tab 
Browse all trashed media, restore individual files to your live library in one click, or bulk-restore. Permanently delete only when you are ready.
Storage Analytics Dashboard 
See a visual breakdown of your total media storage by file type (Images / Videos / Audio / Documents / Other) with colour-coded segments. At-a-glance stats show total media count, total unused count, total storage size, and potential savings.
Duplicate Detection (View) 
Automatically groups files that are byte-for-byte identical using MD5 hashing. See every duplicate group with its total wasted storage. One-click duplicate merge is coming in a future release.
Type Filter & CSV Export 
Filter unused media by file type in one click. Export the full unused media list to CSV for offline review or reporting.
Pagination & Bulk Actions 
Handles large libraries with 30-items-per-page load-more pagination. Bulk select, bulk trash, and bulk whitelist any number of files at once.
Whitelist 
Files can be whitelisted so the scanner never flags them again, even if no URL reference is found.
Page Builder Support (Free) 
Deep scanning of Elementor JSON data, Divi page meta, WPBakery shortcodes, and Beaver Builder layout data.
<h3>Features Coming in a Future Release</h3>
The following features are currently in development and will be part of a paid upgrade tier. They are clearly labelled “Coming Soon” inside the plugin.
<ul>
<li>One-click Duplicate Merge — keep the first copy, rewrite all references, delete the rest automatically.</li>
<li>Scheduled Auto-Cleanup — set a recurring schedule to automatically trash unused media older than N days, with optional email summary.</li>
<li>Advanced Storage Analytics — historical storage trend charts and a hosting cost estimator.</li>
<li>Virtual Folder Organizer — organise attachments into logical virtual folders without touching the server directory structure.</li>
</ul>
Core cleanup (scan → review → trash → restore) will always be free.
<h3>Who Is This For?</h3>
<ul>
<li>Non-technical site owners — the interface walks you through every step; no FTP, no command line.</li>
<li>Bloggers and content sites with years of uploaded but unreferenced media.</li>
<li>WooCommerce stores that have updated product images many times.</li>
<li>Agencies managing multiple client sites.</li>
<li>Developers who want a safe, auditable media cleanup workflow.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Compatibility</h3>
WordPress: 5.8 or higher (tested up to 6.7). 
PHP: 7.4 or higher. 
Multisite: single-site installs only (multisite support is planned).
 Plugin / Theme 
 What is scanned
 Elementor 
 All image widgets, background images, and gallery elements inside Elementor JSON data
 Divi Builder (plugin or theme) 
 Images embedded in Divi module meta and layout data
 WPBakery Page Builder 
 Images referenced inside <code>[vc_*]</code> shortcode attributes
 Beaver Builder 
 Images stored in Beaver Builder layout posts
 WooCommerce 
 Product featured image and all product gallery images
 Gutenberg / Block Editor 
 Image, gallery, cover, media-text, and all core blocks that store attachment IDs
 Classic Editor 
 All <code><img></code> tags and <code>[gallery]</code> shortcodes in post content
 Widgets & Theme Customizer 
 Any upload URLs stored in widget options or theme mod values

Media Purge

Find and safely remove unused media, detect duplicates, and reclaim disk space — free to use with advanced paid features planned.

michaeltyson

Reclaim disk space and clean up your uploads folder by deleting old uploads you are no longer linking to.
This plugin will identify unused files within your uploads folder, and give you the option of archiving then deleting 
some or all of these files.
Before any action is taken, Upload Janitor will automatically make a ‘tar’ archive of all files to be 
erased, including their original paths, so you can restore if necessary.
<h3>How does it work?</h3>
This plugin inspects every file within the uploads folder. For each file, it searches pages or posts that 
reference the file. That is, the plugin searches for the part of each file’s path that comes after the path 
to the uploads folder, such as <code>2010/01/my great but forgotten image.jpg</code>.
The path is searched as-is, as well as URL-encoded with ‘%20’ for spaces, and the same with ‘+’ for spaces – 
 2010/01/my%20great%20but%20forgotten%20image.jpg and <code>2010/01/my+great+but+forgotten+image.jpg</code>. HTML entity-encoded 
forms of all of these are also searched.
If no matches are found, then the file is considered unused.
Note that this plugin plays it safe, and does not distinguish between older post/page revisions and the current version 
of a post/page. If a revision references a file, the file will be considered still in use.
<h3>Restoring</h3>
If something goes wrong, you can always restore. If you have shell access to your site, this is easy. Simply log in, 
navigate to your <code>wp-content/plugins</code> directory, and locate the Upload Janitor archive – it will look like 
 upload_janitor_archive_YYYY-mm-dd.tar.gz. Then, type:
<pre><code> tar zxf <archive name> .
</code></pre>
This will restore all files within the archive.
If you do not have shell access to your server, you will have to download the archive, extract it, then upload the 
contents back to your server. The archive will be accessible at http://your-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/upload_janitor_archive_YYYY-mm-dd.tar.gz

Upload Janitor

Clean up unused images and other files from your uploads folder.

Media Purge vs Upload Janitor