Image Cleanup
Did you ever scale or crop uploaded images in wordpress? Did you ever try various image generating plugins? Did you ever change or add various media image sizes? If yes, chances are that your content folder is full of…
Consider an alternative
Image Cleanup shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 1K+ sites, is rated 3.5/5 and was last updated 9 years ago, and scores 37/100 on our health check.
- No update in 8 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 4.8 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Image Cleanup stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| clean | >100 |
| cleanup | >100 |
| image | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
Rating breakdown
★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 from 63 reviews
About Image Cleanup
From the official readme · v1.9.2Description
Did you ever scale or crop uploaded images in wordpress? Did you ever try various image generating plugins? Did you ever change or add various media image sizes? If yes, chances are that your content folder is full of unused and unreferenced images. These image leftovers will remain cluttering your content folder until the end of days.
Image Cleanup will index these (and many more) unreferenced images. Unreferenced images are not indexed in the wordpress database and also not used by posts, scripts or backup restore meta data. Please note that images which have valid database metadata but are not used in posts are not indexed at this time. This is beyond the scope of this plugin.
Image Cleanup will also find images without meta data and images with incorrect meta data.
- Save space taken up by unreferenced/backup images!
- Fix incorrect metadata (sizes)
- Bulk repair/delete functionality
- Pagination for extremely large result sets
- Logs tabs easily visible for reviewing!
- Detailed information in log tabs!
- Full restore functionality!
- Especially useful for developers!
- Written as class to avoid any conflicts!
- Highly configurable to avoid memory and/or timeouts on some setups
On my one month old website with 50 files (and 250 attachment size variants) this plugin found 95 unreferenced images which I could remove without any conflicts.
There has been a reported case where this plugin indexed and removed over 23.000 images on a website. See forum/review for details
Image Cleanup workflow details
- Retrieves all attachment images from the database (including size variants);
- Finds all images in the wp-content folder;
- Subtracts the attachment (and size variants) from physical found images;
The above will result in an list of invalid images which are not referenced by the database
- Posts will be searched for images and found images will be subtracted from the invalid files (if any);
- Scripts in wp-content will be searched for images and they will be subtracted from the invalid files (if any);
- Backup images (for restoring images after scale/crop) will be subtracted from the invalid images;
- Found unreferenced files will be checked against the meta data to see if the database meta entry still exist;
This results in various image lists in which the images can be reviewed, repaired or removed.
After indexing
After indexing you are able to (temporary) move the images to a backup folder to check the site without the images in the wp-content folder. You could also check the logs in the ../wp-content/uploads/image-cleanup/ID/logs folder for full information about the index.
If any problems are found you can revert the move of images by restoring them to their original locations.
When no problems arrise after moving the images to another location it is possible to permanently remove the images.
Future planned additions
- Index unused valid images
- Index missing image sizes (and option to generate missing images)
- Index missing images which are used in posts
Installation
- Upload Image Cleanup to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Go to the administration page: Tools > Image Cleanup
- Initiate index images
- Check log tabs for detailed information
- Choose to move files to temp location
- Restore or delete files from temp location
- Clutter free content folder! 😉
- After step 5. you can also repair/delete specific meta data (re-indexing required after changes)
Changelog
1.9.2
- Fixed error minimum version on PHP 7.0
- Fixed Strict Standards warnings
- Compatibility with 4.7
- Fixed many notices of undefined variable
- Validate and sanitize user data
1.9.1
- Fixed error where meta data could not be removed, thanks Squill1959
1.9.0
- WARNING: All current index information is removed for this upgrade!
- Changed all file reads into memory efficient loads
- Better memory management e.g. unsetting unused array vars
- Saves category counts into variable for faster browsing
- Skip image paths now also skip the attachment metadata with same paths
- Fixed incorrect meta size after re-index when removing backup metadata
- Improved and fixed some layout glitches
- Improved retaining index position of moved files after re-index
- Fixed some warnings when logs are read but not created
- Added reset plugin option (devs only)
1.8.2
- Fixed error on invalid metadata
1.8.1
- Added check if meta image path was set
1.8
- Fixed potential errors where getimagesize was not checked for results
- Cleaned up parts of code
- Fixed url of log files in general tab
- Cleaned up wordpress ThickBox css
Screenshots
For developers
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FAQ
Image Cleanup: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 29, 2026
Is Image Cleanup free?
Yes. Image Cleanup is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Image Cleanup safe to use in 2026?
Image Cleanup shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 1K+ sites, is rated 3.5/5 and was last updated 9 years ago, and scores 37/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Image Cleanup?
Image Cleanup is active on 1K+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 129,969 times since it launched in October 2013. It was downloaded 198 times in the last 30 days.
Does Image Cleanup work with WordPress 7.1?
Image Cleanup is officially tested up to WordPress 4.8.32, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Image Cleanup last updated?
The latest version, 1.9.2, was released on November 28, 2017 (9 years ago).
Who makes Image Cleanup?
Image Cleanup is developed and maintained by opicron.
What are the best alternatives to Image Cleanup?
The most popular alternatives to Image Cleanup are Advanced Database Cleaner (100K+ installs), Media Cleaner: Clean your W… (90K+ installs) and Advanced WordPress Reset (10K+ installs).
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