If you’re building or maintaining a website with a lot of images, you already know how tedious manual optimization can get. Upload, compress, download, replace, repeat. For a handful of images it’s fine, but when you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands, it doesn’t scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s where the ShortPixel CLI<\/a> comes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s a bash script that connects directly to the ShortPixel API<\/a> and batch-optimizes all the images in a folder and even all the subfolders within it. You can use it locally on your machine, run it on a server, or set it up as a cron job so everything happens automatically in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This makes it ideal for developers, agencies, or anyone managing large image libraries outside of WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best part? It’s a single file. No Node.js, no Python, no package managers. Just bash and curl, both already available on pretty much any Linux or macOS system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At its core, the script scans a directory and all its subdirectories for images, uploads each one to the ShortPixel API, and downloads the optimized version. But it does quite a bit more than that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Head over to the GitHub repo<\/a> and clone it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first time you run the script with a terminal attached, it launches an interactive setup wizard. It walks you through everything: your API key, compression level, number of parallel workers, backup preferences, output settings, and email notifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every prompt has a sensible default you can accept by pressing Enter. When it’s done, the wizard writes a fully commented .env file in the script’s directory. If you ever want to re-run the wizard, just delete the .env and start again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s what the wizard covers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don’t have an API key yet? Grab one from your ShortPixel dashboard<\/a>. The free plan gives you 100 image credits per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you prefer to skip the wizard entirely, pass your key directly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In non-interactive environments (CI, cron), the wizard is skipped automatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The script supports three output modes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note that –overwrite and –output-dir are mutually exclusive. The script will let you know if you try to use both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Run 4 workers in parallel and overwrite the originals in place (backups are created automatically before anything gets replaced):<\/p>\n\n\n\n Glossy mode gives you near-perfect visual quality with solid file size savings. Adding +webp generates a WebP version alongside the original format:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The –force flag ignores the state files and reprocesses every image, even ones that were already optimized:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Changed your mind? This copies every backup file back to its original location and writes a restore_audit.log so you have a record of what was restored:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every time the script finishes, whether it completes normally, hits an error, or gets interrupted it prints a summary showing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’ve set the EMAIL variable, this same report gets sent to your inbox automatically. The script detects whether mail or sendmail is available, or you can set MAIL_CMD explicitly in your .env.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, it definitely works with macOS and any Linux based OS.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n No. The script tracks every processed file in .splog state files. Already-optimized images are skipped on the next run. Use –force to override this.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Your originals are safe. Backups are created before the API call, and state entries are only written after a successful optimization. Just run the script again, it picks up where it left off.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yes. The script detects when there’s no TTY and runs non-interactively, skipping the wizard entirely. Pass your API key via the -k flag or as an environment variable.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n If you’re working with large image sets or need full automation, ShortPixel CLI gives you a simple and reliable way to optimize everything at scale. You can find the full script and documentation on GitHub<\/a> and start optimizing your images in minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Easily optimize your pictures and cut down pixels fast using ShortPixel CLI<\/p>\n\n\n\nKey features<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Getting started<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Clone the repository<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
git clone https:\/\/github.com\/short-pixel-optimizer\/shortpixel-sh.git<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\ncd shortpixel-sh<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nchmod +x shortpixel-optimize.sh<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n2. Run the onboarding wizard<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
.\/shortpixel-optimize.sh<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n\n
.\/shortpixel-optimize.sh -k YOUR_API_KEY .\/images<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nWhere do optimized files go?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Common use cases<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Optimize a folder with multiple workers<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
.\/shortpixel-optimize.sh -k YOUR_KEY --overwrite -j 4 .\/images<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nGlossy compression with WebP conversion<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
.\/shortpixel-optimize.sh -k YOUR_KEY -l 2 -o .\/out --convertto +webp .\/images<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nRe-optimize everything from scratch<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
.\/shortpixel-optimize.sh --force --overwrite .\/images<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nRestore originals from backup<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
.\/shortpixel-optimize.sh --restore .\/images<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe analytics dashboard<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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FAQs<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
Does it work on macOS?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Will it re-optimize files that are already compressed?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What happens if something fails mid-run?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Can I use it in a CI\/CD pipeline?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Try ShortPixel CLI for free!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n