AVAR Media Optimizer

AVAR Media Optimizer helps you take control of a growing WordPress Media Library without turning cleanup into a risky guessing game. Find media that appears unused, discover orphan files outside the Media Library, detect duplicates, optimize images, generate modern WebP or AVIF versions, and safely move unwanted media to a restorable trash before deleting it permanently. Everything is designed around one principle: Free up storage and improve your media library without taking unnecessary risks with your files. Find unused media with confidence Over time, WordPress websites collect images and files that may no longer be needed. The difficult part is knowing which ones are actually safe to remove. AVAR Media Optimizer scans common WordPress references and classifies media into clear groups:

• Used — a supported reference to the media was found.
• Unused — no supported reference was detected.
• Verify manually — the plugin found an ambiguous, custom or unsupported situation and will not automatically treat the media as safe to remove.

The scanner checks many common locations, including:

• posts and pages,
• featured images,
• WooCommerce product galleries,
• Elementor data,
• ACF and custom metadata,
• widgets and WordPress options,
• users, terms and comments,
• generated thumbnails,
• scaled image variants,
• WebP and AVIF copies.

No WordPress plugin can understand every custom theme, page builder or plugin ever created. When AVAR Media Optimizer is not confident, it prefers to ask for manual verification rather than make an aggressive cleanup decision. Safe cleanup with a restorable trash Cleaning a Media Library should not mean permanently deleting something with one click. Media can be moved to a protected plugin trash first, together with the data needed for recovery. You can:

• restore attachments,
• restore related thumbnails,
• restore WordPress attachment metadata,
• configure trash retention,
• permanently delete items only when you are ready.

The plugin includes additional safeguards around destructive operations to reduce the chance of overwriting or deleting unrelated files. Find orphan files outside the Media Library Not every file inside wp-content/uploads belongs to a valid Media Library attachment. The disk scanner can help identify:

• files not registered in the Media Library,
• stale thumbnail files,
• orphan WebP or AVIF files,
• files left behind by removed attachments,
• media that can potentially be adopted into WordPress.

Detected files can be reviewed before any action is taken. Detect duplicate media Duplicate uploads can quietly consume a large amount of storage. AVAR Media Optimizer detects duplicates by comparing file content rather than relying only on filenames. This makes it possible to discover identical files even when they were uploaded under different names. Optimize images locally Reduce image size directly on your WordPress server. AVAR Media Optimizer does not upload your images to an external optimization service. Depending on the image libraries available on your hosting environment, the plugin can:

• optimize JPEG, PNG and WebP images,
• resize oversized images,
• keep a recovery copy of the original,
• restore the original image,
• generate WebP versions,
• generate AVIF versions.

Available formats and optimization results depend on your server's PHP image-processing libraries, memory and available resources. Generate WebP and AVIF Modern image formats can significantly reduce image size while maintaining visual quality. AVAR Media Optimizer can generate WebP and AVIF versions when your server supports them. The Diagnostics screen shows which image formats are available on your hosting environment. Replace media without changing the attachment ID Need to update an image that is already used across your website? The Media Replace tool lets you replace the physical files of an attachment while keeping the same WordPress attachment ID. Standard WordPress references can therefore continue pointing to the same attachment. Automate routine media maintenance For larger websites, media maintenance does not need to be entirely manual. AVAR Media Optimizer supports recurring maintenance workflows such as:

• scheduled scans,
• trash retention,
• image optimization tasks,
• background processing,
• summary e-mails.

WP-CLI commands are also available for administrators who prefer command-line workflows. Built with safety in mind Media cleanup is a destructive task, so AVAR Media Optimizer deliberately uses a cautious approach. Depending on the operation, the plugin uses safeguards such as:

• protected internal storage,
• storage exposure diagnostics,
• ownership verification,
• recovery information,
• checksums,
• file and attachment locks,
• guarded restore operations,
• exclusions,
• warnings for uncertain results.

Before performing a large cleanup on any production website, we still recommend keeping an independent website and uploads backup. Privacy-friendly image optimization Your images are processed locally on your WordPress server. AVAR Media Optimizer does not send media files or website content to an external image optimization service. The plugin can perform a small request to your own website to verify that its recovery storage is not publicly accessible. If your uploads are hosted on another domain, such as a CDN or object storage service, the plugin does not contact that external domain automatically. An external storage test is performed only when an administrator explicitly requests it from Diagnostics.

1.22.4

• Initial WordPress.org release.