In the following article we will look at two ways to view and delete both unused and unwanted media from your library.
Site Media Library Usage
Firstly, it is good to understand how much of your storage you are using to do this from the Dashboard page click on the Media heading in the left hand navigation.
When the Media Library is displayed, your usage information is shown at the top of the screen, and will show you what percentage you have used.
You can see in the above image, this library is using 33% of it's storage limit.
Checking whether a library item is being used
If you have an image or document in your library and need to confirm if it is in use on the website, you can do that from the Media Library.
Firstly, double click on the image or document you want to check, for example the image of the children outside.
This will display the Attachment details screen, with more information about the file. Click on the Check Usage button to confirm whether it is currently in use.
The screen with refresh and under the button it will list details of the page(s) where this file is currently being used. In this example it is on the Poll Example page.
In the following example the man_with_book image is not currently being used on any pages, see the highlight message This file is not used on any content page.
To delete this file, click on the Delete permanently link at the bottom of the page, following by clicking OK on the pop up window.
Reviewing Unused files in the Media Manager
Another good way to remove unused files is via the Media Manager. You can access this page by clicking on Media and the Media Manager from the left hand navigation.
As you can see in the above image this will display all files uploaded during the current month, in this example December 2024. As well as File Name, you have an Upload Date, File Size and Usage indicator.
Where the Usage is flagged as Unused, it means that the file is not being used by any page, so could be taking up space unnecessarily.
If you wanted to remove this file and any other Unused files, you can then select the checkbox(s) at the end of the row and click on the Delete Files button, followed by the OK button to remove the item.
To check other months and years, you can click on the Year and Month dropdown to select a different month. If there is no option for a specific Month, it means nothing was uploaded on this date.